


Haunted

by idreamofdraco



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Blackmail, Community: interhouse_fest, Drama, Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Ghosts, HP: EWE, Head Girl Hermione, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts Era, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Not Epilogue Compliant, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Hermione Granger, Post - Deathly Hallows, Post-War, Romance, Self-Harm, Swearing, Wordcount: Over 1.000, Wordcount: Over 10.000, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idreamofdraco/pseuds/idreamofdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Hermione Granger returned to Hogwarts to complete her ruined seventh year, she expected to help heal the wounds left behind by the war. She never expected to be hated by the student body or haunted by her own personal ghosts—among which she could count Draco Malfoy, her most frustrating haunt of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UnseenLibrarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnseenLibrarian/gifts).



> Written for Interhouse Fest 2014. The prompt follows at the end of the chapter.
> 
> It looks like I'm returning to my roots! This prompt jumped out at me during the fest, and I was inspired to give Draco/Hermione another try. I haven't written DHr since I finished Dark Skies in 2009, so we'll see how it goes. For my Draco/Ginny followers, I still have plenty of DG in me. New updates and brand new stories are still in our future. ;)
> 
> The warning and rating are really just to be safe rather than sorry.
> 
> Also, if you read this story during Interhouse Fest, I SHOULD be expanding this fic past the seven chapters that are posted there.

  


The torchlight flickered against the walls, casting agitated shadows every ten feet or so down the corridor. Outside, Hermione could hear how the wind beat against the side of the castle, howling like an angry beast intent on entering the walls even if it had to bash its way inside. The air whistled through every corridor Hermione encountered, and as she entered the second hour of her patrol, she feared the ghosts of Hogwarts were following her.

Not ghosts like Nearly Headless Nick or the Bloody Baron, disconcerting as their sudden appearances and disappearances naturally were. The ghosts that haunted Hermione were the ones that held no form and made no sound. They were the memento mori of a battle waged inside the walls of the school and the students and friends who had fallen victim to tyranny as they sacrificed their lives.

For what?

That was the question that plagued Hermione as she stalked the halls, conducting her rounds as Head Girl.

When she'd returned to Hogwarts to make up for her ruined seventh year, she'd never imagined the grief and anger that would linger from that final, fateful battle. And when she'd accepted the position of Head Girl—a position Headmistress McGonagall had thought appropriate considering Hermione's seniority and experiences during the war—she'd never imagined how out of her depth she would be. As usual, Hermione had considered her options logically and then acted in the best interests of everyone, but she always forgot about the human element when she made her decisions. That was her tragic flaw. She’d just wanted to help, but for what?

Hermione heard a creak like a cabinet opening and paused, tilting her head to listen over the sound of the storm. She approached a door and opened it cautiously, remembering her first patrol as Head Girl nearly two weeks prior.

The sounds of crying had echoed through the second floor corridor from the girls' toilet where Moaning Myrtle resided. But if Myrtle had been the lone crier, Hermione might not have found herself in her current hated predicament. Myrtle was nowhere to be found and Hermione had discovered a sobbing fourth year instead.

Peering inside the stall with caution, she'd called out, "Hello? Are you all right in there?" A silly question, that, and the occupant must have thought so as well because the girl was suddenly overcome with a case of overwhelming hiccups. Then, when she saw who it was disturbing her grief, the fourth year's eyes had grown wide with shock.

What Hermione had said next could have won a prize for least comforting words ever spoken in the history of mankind: "It's nearly curfew. If you aren't injured, you really need to return to your common room." True enough words, but tactless in the current situation. The fourth year had run out of the toilet, crying with renewed vigor. The next day, her sixth year brother had tracked Hermione down and informed her with impotent rage that their mother had died in the battle that past May, taking Hermione to task for her lack of sympathy. The story had spread, and now Hermione's presence was met with glares wherever she went. Not what she had hoped for when she'd returned to Hogwarts and accepted her Head Girl badge from McGonagall.

Hermione knew suffering. She understood loss and grief and anger, but she didn't know how to relate to people. She'd wanted to be Head Girl because she'd hoped to shepherd the students of Hogwarts through their mutual grief, and instead she'd only hurt them further.

She wished she could say the fourth year girl had been the only casualty of her tactlessness, but there were plenty of other students that she’d managed to offend in some way or another, just by sheer lack of understanding. The only people to continue to grudgingly support her were the core members of Dumbledore’s Army: Ginny, Neville, and Luna. Had Harry and Ron returned to Hogwarts, Hermione doubted they would have taken her side in the disputes. They had never seen her side of things when they'd argued throughout the years; why would this situation be any different?

Frowning with bitterness, Hermione entered the empty classroom and discovered the source of the creaking sound she’d heard, which had, in fact, belonged to a cabinet rustled by the wind surging through an open window. Closing both the cabinet and the window, Hermione banished thoughts of Harry and Ron from her mind, as she usually did. It hurt too much to think of their abandonment. Especially Ron’s.

She continued on her patrol of the fourth-floor corridor, slowly making her way down to the lowest levels of the castle to complete her duties for the night.

In the dungeons, the storm outside Hogwarts did not exist, and the eerie silence of the underground corridors exacerbated the unease in Hermione’s mind. Voices, muted through the stone walls but still discernable, accosted her when she turned a corner, and she sighed. It was after hours, and she was still on duty, so she had to investigate.

She turned another corner to see a student standing in front of a portrait halfway down the corridor, his body strained with tension and his fists clenched at his sides. He was an older student, and the patch on his school robes placed him in Slytherin.

“My parents are not traitors, you mangy hypocrite!”

Hermione couldn’t hear the portrait’s response—or see the painting’s occupant—from her stance at the end of the corridor. When she made to move closer, the sound of her feet hardly made a sound, and yet the boy was alerted to her presence and drew back from the wall in haste. He’d already been tense before, but he froze up even more upon seeing Hermione.

“Never mind,” the boy spat at the portrait, and then he backed away from Hermione, his hands in the air. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving. Don’t take any bloody points for Circe’s sake.”

“I wasn’t—” she started, but he suddenly stopped and cut her off, his jaw clenched in stubborn defiance of her supposed authority.

“You think you’re so important, but you’re an idiot for thinking any of this even matters anymore. Everyone thinks you’re delusional. And mean.”

With a disgusted sneer, he took off down the corridor before Hermione could respond. Not that she would have known what to say.

She knew how the students felt about her. Hostility followed her wherever she went, and part of her had wondered if maybe they were just channeling their anger from the war onto the easiest target. Harry and Ron weren’t there to stand up for her, and even though Ginny, Neville, and Luna commanded a lot of respect from the student body, their defense of Hermione went ignored.

Still, even if the students weren’t really angry at her, their treatment of her still hurt. Hermione didn’t think she was more important than anyone else, and she enforced the school rules as strictly as she did because she didn’t know what else to do. She’d heard what Hogwarts had been like under the leadership of Snape and the Carrows, but she hadn’t lived it, so maybe she didn’t really understand where the students were coming from. Still… she thought they would want to return to something that resembled normalcy at Hogwarts, and part of that normalcy was keeping to school rules about curfew and acceptable behavior. Any deviance from those rules naturally resulted in the loss of House points. What else was Hermione supposed to do?

She swiped at her eyes with an angry gesture, and then quickly wiped her hands on her robes. The end of her patrol and the oblivion of her bed were just in sight when she reached the last corridor of the dungeons, only to be stopped by the sight of a mob blocking the stairs up to the first floor. That’s exactly what it was, she decided as she hurried down the corridor, for a group of six students had cornered one student against the wall. The aggressors were of various ages and, based on their uniforms, represented the Houses of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. They were also armed, the tips of their wands sparking with errant magic.

The identity of the student they had cornered became clear as Hermione approached the group. The glint of the platinum blonde hair in the light of the torch above his head gave her pause, but she had her responsibilities, so she was spurred back into action.

“Break it up!” she called. “You are all supposed to be in bed right now. I could give you detention for dueling!”

As she broke into the center of the group, she realized they weren’t actually dueling—fairly, anyway. Draco Malfoy stood against the wall, his hands balled into fists at his sides but otherwise empty as far as she could tell. A Hufflepuff girl took a step back, and a strange scraping sound accompanied the movement.

 _“Accio!”_  Hermione called, pointing her wand at the ground. The girl wobbled as a wand zoomed out from under her foot into Hermione’s hand. It was Malfoy’s. Disgusted, Hermione scowled at the six students, and they met her glare with impertinent glares of their own. She didn’t know the names of all of the students, but she recognized Thea Hastings, a new first year Gryffindor, and Dennis Creevey.

“When I tell your Heads of Houses—”

“Sod off, Granger!”

She spun back around to meet Malfoy’s glare, which was the worst of all, his whole face full of contempt and his jaw clenched tight like he wanted to rip her throat out with his teeth. His body shook with the force of his derision. He swept his gaze down her body and then back up, and then he snorted as if to dismiss what he had seen.

“No one asked you to butt in, you stupid Mudblood,” he said with a dry, scoffing laugh.

Hermione took a step back. None of the other students rushed in to defend her. Instead, they looked at her with defiance in their eyes, as if she were interrupting and they expected her to leave them to it.

She straightened her spine and steeled herself. It was time that she take control back from the students of Hogwarts. She was the Head Girl here, not them!

“Fighting is strictly forbidden and it is after hours. If you do not return to your common rooms at once—”

“Mind your own business and leave,” Malfoy spat, taking an unsteady step away from the wall.

The light from the torch shone on him better now, and Hermione saw why Malfoy was trembling. His robes were ripped in places, and a large, bleeding gash striped his thigh, from the inside of his knee nearly all the way up to the outside of his hip.

“You need to see Madame Pomfrey,” she said, her eyes fastened on the blood-soaked material of his robes. A puddle had formed under him, and the blood seemed to absorb the light, reflecting the inky shadows of the corridor instead of the torchlight. The sight made her stomach roil, reminding her of how she had splinched Ron when she’d Apparated them away from the Ministry of Magic to Grimmauld Place and then to the Forest of Dean in quick succession earlier that year.

“How many times do I have to say it? Fuck. Off.”

Hermione gasped as he closed the distance between them and grabbed her upper arms, shoving her with such force that she fell onto the ground. She looked up at the seven students in front of her, all staring at her with creased brows and angry wrinkles at the corners of their mouths. She didn’t see a single glimmer of concern or recognition in their eyes. She could have been a Death Eater for all they cared.

Malfoy pushed to the front of the group to sneer at her. “My aunt should have finished you off when she had the chance,” he said. “You don’t know how to keep your Mudblood nose out of other people’s affairs.”

Her breath sucked in in a sibilant hiss that seemed to echo in the corridor, though the echo must have only been in her mind. The cold steel of a knife ghosted across her limbs, and for a moment, Hermione was transported back several months to Easter weekend. She could still hear Ron’s voice screaming her name in between her own screams as Bellatrix Lestrange pierced her skin and let blood run free. This past summer, when Hermione had thought about her torture, Ron’s voice had brought her pleasure. That he had cared so much for her to beg to be taken in her place had made her flush with unbridled joy. But now there was nothing remotely pleasurable about the memory. Maybe Ron had meant it when he’d screamed it, but he was off with Harry training to be an Auror now. She’d been so stupid to think he would have chosen her over Harry.

She shivered at the memory of the knife and rubbed the inside of her forearm where the word ‘Mudblood’ still lingered as a faint scar. Her screams and Ron’s disappeared as she returned to the present, to Draco Malfoy and six other students staring at her in contempt.

Hermione had suffered too much to be treated this way by anyone. No, she hadn’t been at Hogwarts under the Carrows, but she’d fought her own demons, people like Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort himself. The weight of the entire war had rested on Harry’s shoulders, and she’d put her lot in with his, so she’d carried some of the burden, too. For anyone to dismiss her because she didn’t understand what they’d gone through was foolishness. It was stupidity.

She picked herself up off the floor and straightened her spine as she met Dennis Creevey’s eyes. “Filch is patrolling the Great Hall. He should be down here any minute now,” she said, her voice hard and cold like steel. “Don’t get caught.”

He nodded, instantly understanding her meaning as she turned around to flee the scene.

The sounds of knuckles beating flesh followed her up the stairs, and it wasn’t until she’d arrived back at Gryffindor Tower, dazed, lost in memory, and—most of all—hurt, that she realized she was still holding Malfoy’s wand.

**TBC**


	2. Chapter Two

  


The next morning, Hermione took her place next to Ginny at the Gryffindor table for breakfast, but the thought of eating made her stomach heave. She’d tossed and turned all night long, regretting what she’d done—what she’d allowed—in the dungeons. What if Malfoy reported her to a teacher? As Head Girl, she should have punished, or at least reported, all seven students for being out of bed past curfew and for fighting. She should have stopped it. Instead, she’d let her anger and loneliness take over her judgment. Instead, she’d left Malfoy there to be beaten by six people. What if he did go to a teacher? What could she possibly say to explain her actions? The truth was hardly an excuse and she could already hear Professor McGonagall’s disappointed lecture.

What if she lost her badge?

No, the plates of bacon, eggs, and sausages in front of her nauseated her further, so Hermione poured herself a glass of orange juice instead. The acidity burned all the way down her esophagus to pool in her stomach, far from relieving her compulsion to throw up.

“All right, Hermione?” Ginny asked, making her jump. Ron’s sister looked at her with concerned eyes, but there was a tightness to her lips that always worried Hermione.

Was that tightness a sign of Ginny’s suffering from the past year? Or was it a sign that Ginny didn’t care as much for Hermione as Hermione hoped? She couldn’t interpret the Weasley’s expression clearly anymore, which was a strange phenomenon since Weasleys were typically so emotional that they wore their emotions openly, whether they wanted to or not. But Ginny had had to learn new skills in the last year, and as one of the leaders of the rebellion at Hogwarts, she’d faced things the other students of Hogwarts hadn’t had the misfortune to face. The tightness, the unreadable expressions, perhaps they were merely traces of the hard skin she’d developed in the last year. Perhaps they weren’t the signs of dislike that Hermione feared they were.

“Yes,” Hermione answered. “I didn’t sleep well last night is all, and I don’t feel very well today.”

“Maybe you should go see Madame Pomfrey,” Neville suggested from across the table. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Lots of students have been having a hard time this year, and she’s been helping them as much as she can. Professor Slughorn can’t brew Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction fast enough to keep it in supply.”

“How would you know that?” Ginny asked, and then she blanched. “I mean, you don’t have to answer that—”

Neville waved her concern away with a rueful smile. “Nah, it’s all right. I’ve been helping with the potions stores. I mostly help Professor Sprout harvest and prepare ingredients, but sometimes I help Madame Pomfrey catalog the inventory. I’ve noticed that the Hospital Wing is always busy these days, and Oblivious Unction is in short supply.”

Both Hermione and Ginny nodded, grim with understanding.

“Besides,” Neville continued as he turned his gaze down to his plate, his fork mixing all his food together in a jumbled heap. “I’ve been taking some Dr. Ubbly’s every now and then, too. The memories, you know. Madame Pomfrey says they can leave scars.”

Hermione had been impressed with Neville when she, Harry, and Ron had met up with him again at the Hog’s Head before the Battle of Hogwarts. He’d changed. Matured. Grown into a confidence that they’d only glimpsed in him throughout the years. She hadn’t thought before what the cost of that growth had been to him. Now she could see that he’d lost some of his innocence in the rebellion against the Carrows. Who hadn’t, though?

“I’m fine. It’s not that serious,” Hermione said softly. “Patrol last night was just….”

“Did someone attack you again?” Ginny asked, a savage glint in her eyes.

Hermione looked from the crease in Ginny’s brow to her choking grip on her fork and felt warmth well up inside her at her friend’s ferocious concern. “No, not exactly. At least, no one threw a spell at me this time.”

At that moment, Dennis Creevey walked by behind Neville, and his eyes met hers. He nodded briefly before turning away to claim a seat at the end of the table. Hermione turned around, scanning the thin group of Slytherins dispersed along their own table for a sign of platinum blond, but Malfoy wasn’t there.

She gulped and met Ginny’s eyes again, but only briefly as shame forced her to look away. “I might have done something I shouldn’t have.”

As she detailed in nervous whispers about her rounds the night before, she noticed Ginny’s grip on her fork loosen. Both she and Neville returned to eating their breakfasts as they listened, their expressions unconcerned.

At the end of Hermione’s tale, Ginny shrugged. “So? He deserves it. And you might have won some points with Dennis and the others. Maybe they’ll spread the word and everyone will let up on you.”

Hermione leaned back, scandalized. “I don’t _want_ the word to spread! I ignored my duty as Head Girl and let six students attack one unarmed student. What if Malfoy tells someone? What if I lose my badge?”

Ginny shrugged. “Maybe you need to decide what you want more: to be respected by the student body or an authority over it. Clearly you can’t be both.”

Neville nodded, his mouth full of sausage.

“Well, how did you two do it? How did you command respect and authority from the students last year?”

There was a slight pause as Ginny thoughtfully took a drink of her pumpkin juice before she answered. “They needed someone to stand up for them. They needed someone to fight for them. You get Crucio-ed a few times in the middle of the Great Hall, you’re bound to gain some respect. We took the fall for them as much as possible, and they appreciated it. But it’s not like that anymore. We’re all safe now. They don’t need someone to stick up for them; they need someone to explain why it still hurts, why they’re still afraid. Can you do that?”

The enormity of such a task was overwhelming. Hermione had answers to thousands of questions asked and unasked, but she didn’t know why old scars still stung or why the ghosts in her memories continued to haunt her. And if she didn’t know for herself, she certainly couldn’t explain it for anyone else.

She shook her head, avoiding both Neville’s and Ginny’s eyes.

“Sounds like you’ve got your answer, then,” Ginny said, and with that, the topic was dismissed.

Luckily, owls flew into the Great Hall with the post, preventing Hermione from her annoying habit of not letting things go. She scanned the rafters for a familiar owl, just as she did every morning, and her heart leapt in her chest when Pigwidgeon zig-zagged through the air to the Gryffindor table, landing in the butter dish in front of Hermione.

“Is that from Harry?” Ginny asked, but Hermione had already grabbed Pig and started to make off with him out of the Great Hall to read the letter in privacy. She was feet away before Ginny had opened her mouth.

She arrived on the landing of the second floor corridor when Pig escaped the confines of her hands and began to zoom around her head like a fluffy, annoying bee. Used to his antics, she stopped instead of reaching for him, allowing him to calm himself down enough to perch on her shoulder voluntarily.

“Good owl,” she said, reaching over to pet him gently with a finger. He nuzzled against her and let out a contented hoot. “I guess you deserve a couple treats for being such a good boy.”

She turned to continue up the stairs and froze, a shiver shooting down her spine and dread filling her stomach.

“Going somewhere?” Malfoy asked, slowly descending the stairs like a snake stalking its mousey prey.

Hermione didn’t say anything, just watched, afraid of what he would do. Not genuinely afraid. No, she didn’t fear him. But he was still a sneaky coward, and there was no telling what he meant to say or do to her. She kept her hands down at her side, her wand slipping from the holster on her forearm into her hand, where she could draw it in a hurry if necessary.

He descended to the landing and stopped, keeping his distance. One eyebrow cocked up as he said, “Nothing to say? What’s wrong, cat got your tongue?”

“Can I help you with something?” she asked with a sneer. Her confidence took a hit as she noticed scratches on his face and a swollen bruise around his eye. She’d let that happen to him and done nothing to stop it.

“Actually, you can.” He smirked when her eyes widened in shock, and he took several steps closer until he towered over her. An intimidation tactic, certainly. Well, Hermione wouldn’t be swayed, not by his words or his proximity! “As I recall, you stole my wand last night.”

“I did no such—!” Oh, but she had. It might have been an accident, but it was true that Hermione still possessed his wand after confiscating it from the Hufflepuff student the previous night. Changing tracks, she composed herself and replied, “I don’t have it on me at the moment.”

“Good thing it’s Saturday. Means we have plenty of time to go retrieve it, don’t we?”

She darted around him to climb the stairs, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. “I’m busy right now. You can collect it later.”

“No, Granger,” he growled, and before Hermione knew what was happening, he’d spun her around and pinned her to a wall with a hand at her shoulder. Pigwidgeon flew off with a high-pitched screech, leaving Hermione to Malfoy's mercy. “We will collect it now.”

“Or what?” she challenged. He craned over her and she had to lift her chin to meet his eyes, but she didn’t shy away from the hatred she saw there. She’d seen too much of that from her fellow students in the last two weeks, and his hatred pained her least of anyone else’s.

He bared his teeth as if it took all his strength not to snap at her—like a wild animal—and his palm dug into her shoulder painfully, but Hermione didn’t flinch.

“Or I’ll tell McGonagall what you did last night. Or, should I say, what you _didn’t_ do?”

She knew the color had drained from her face because all the blood in her head went straight down to her suddenly shaky knees. She became grateful for Malfoy’s bitter grip holding her up even as she hated him for blackmailing her.

“Fine,” she said through her teeth, which threatened to shatter with the force of her clenched jaws. “I’ll go get your wand.”

“Good girl.” He patted her cheek with a pleased smirk and then released her, and she took him off guard by shoving him away from her.

“Don’t you _‘good girl’_ me!” Before he knew what was happening, her wand was drawn and pointed directly at his pointy nose. Needless to say, the smirk fell off his face at that. “You may think dirty tricks will get you everything you want, but you’re still an evil little toad and everyone knows it.”

The blaze in Malfoy’s eyes spoke of how much he loathed her—mutual on her part, of course. If looks could kill, his would have sliced her into bloody ribbons. Hermione hardly felt threatened by that look, and even though his fingers curled into talons, she didn’t fear him grabbing her again. She had the wand, not he; he was powerless.

“Better the evil everyone knows than the one they don’t,” he snarled.

Hermione had never seen him look so animalistic and unhinged. While she didn’t fear him, she was wary of him. A cornered animal was capable of anything. “What do you mean by that?”

“Everyone would expect me to walk away from the scene of a fight if my enemy was the one losing it, but you?” He laughed, a forced, emotionless bark of sound. “Would Hermione Granger really let someone suffer under her watch? Even someone she hates?”

Her wand lowered involuntarily as she stared at him, unaware of the deranged smile that lit her face. Malfoy saw it, and a look of confused uncertainty crossed his features, just for a moment.

“You obviously don’t know what I’m capable of,” she said in a sneering voice. The images of a beetle in a jar and centaurs carrying Dolores Umbridge deep into the Forbidden Forest crossed her mind before she banished them away. “And that’s not an empty boast.” She turned away, not waiting for Malfoy as she climbed the stairs. “Besides,” she added halfway up the staircase, just as he began to ascend behind her, “Do you really think anyone would care what happened to you?”

He said nothing and shoved past her, making her laugh in that same humorless fashion he had just moments ago.

“The teachers would have to pretend to care, of course. The students? They want to see you suffer for what you and your family did—”

“Shut up! SHUT UP!”

Hermione found herself shoved against a wall again, both of Malfoy’s hands on her shoulders, inches away from the smooth column of her neck. Her wand fell to the floor as his fingers pressed into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises and his arms shook with the raw emotion coursing through him. If she thought she’d seen hatred in his eyes earlier, she’d been wrong. That had been mere dislike. _This_ look, this lack of awareness of his actions, this indifference to the pain he caused her, the deep wrinkle in his forehead where his brows drew down into the angriest lines she’d ever seen on a man’s face—this was malice, and it burned her straight down to her stomach, kindling the fire of her own intense revulsion.

“Or what?” she whispered. “You’ll write home to daddy?”

_“SHUT UP!”_

He was shaking her now, and the back of Hermione’s head kept hitting the stone behind her, though she didn’t think he meant to bash her skull in. Regardless of his intentions, he was clearly out of control, and Hermione would have a headache (or worse) for the rest of the day if she couldn’t get him to stop soon. Unfortunately, his grip was too strong as she ineffectually battled with him. His rage made him unstoppable.

_“OI! What the effing hell are you doing, Malfoy?”_

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief as Ginny pulled Malfoy off her. He stumbled backwards, teetering close to the edge of the stairs, and he shook his head, his eyes clearing as if suddenly becoming aware of his surroundings, but that loathing and anger still remained in the tightness around his mouth. He looked between Ginny and Hermione, who had a shaking hand to her head as if to protect it from a new onslaught, and then he turned away, retreating down the stairs without a word.

“Hey!” Hermione called, taking a step forward to stop him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He ignored her, skipping two steps at a time, nearly leaping down the staircase. He looked more like he was fleeing, but if he felt so awful for what he’d done, why didn’t he apologize?

“ _Malfoy,_ I’m warning you!”

He stopped then, throwing a disgusted glance at her, though she hardly noticed. Ginny came to Hermione’s side, one hand on Hermione’s back, the other on her drawn wand. Hermione felt better for her presence—and foolish for thinking Malfoy wouldn’t hurt her. There was nothing he wouldn’t do when cornered and desperate. She shouldn’t have forgotten that.

“What, Granger? Going to take points from me? Take them all! No one cares about your stupid points!”

She clenched her trembling hands and straightened her spine. She was never going to win Malfoy’s respect, so she was free to use her authority.

“You’ll serve detention tonight for… for attacking a student. Seven o’clock, outside Professor McGonagall’s office.”

His eyes rolled upwards and a ghost of a smirk returned to his lips. Well… at least she’d amused him, she thought bitterly.

“Or what?” he asked, his arms falling open in front of him as if begging her to give him her best shot. She didn’t have a best shot, or even any mediocre ones for that matter. She only had the head on her shoulders and her ghosts ever haunting her.

“Or I’ll tell Professor McGonagall, and then the Ministry will hear all about it. Fighting is against your probation, isn’t it? We’d hate for you to have to drop out of school to finish your sentence of house arrest. Or would you get sent to Azkaban to sit in a cell with your father?”

She didn’t know why she was taunting him, but there was something about his stupid smirk and the hate in his eyes that provoked her, made her want to be the worst Hermione Granger she had ever been. Even Ginny was staring at her, her mouth slightly open in disbelief but her eyes wary. That disbelief kind of stung Hermione, who’d done a lot of things during the war to keep Harry, Ron, and herself alive. Everyone had changed in some way during the last year, so why was Hermione’s coldness a surprise?

Malfoy had paled at her pronouncement, his lips falling into his own expression of disbelief. The anger was still there, buried underneath the surface, and as the shock wore off, Hermione saw something that looked a lot like fear cross his face. He didn’t say anything as he stalked away, down the stairs and presumably to breakfast or the dungeons. As he fled, Hermione noticed his limping gait. A product of the slash down his leg from the previous night?

As she continued her ascent up the stairs, Ginny following cautiously behind, she wondered why he hadn’t healed his leg or at least received something for the pain. But she put the matter out of her mind. Draco Malfoy’s pain was of little consequence to her.

**TBC**


	3. Chapter Three

_Hey Hermione!_

_How’s it going? Sorry for not writing as much as I said I would, but it’s been busy over here and I’m sure you’re busy studying anyway. Harry and I got the best luck when we were matched up with Kingsley as our mentor, but he doesn’t cut us any slack even though we’ve known him ages now._

Hermione snorted. Ages? A few short years of rebel affiliation did not suggest the kind of familiarity Ron implied, but she smiled at the letter anyway. Ron felt important, and she could just see him strutting down the halls of the Ministry as if he ran the place just because he and his parents knew most of the biggest players in the Battle of Hogwarts—Harry, of course, being the _key_ player.

_Harry thinks Kingsley wants to avoid showing favoritism to The-Boy-Who-Lived. It’d set a bad example for the other recruits. I reckon he’s right, but come on! The man who defeated Voldemort deserves a little special treatment, right?_

She read between the lines: The man who defeated Voldemort… and his best friend, surely.

_Training is brutal but it’ll be worth it when we finally get out in the field. I can’t wait to catch the buggers who are still at large. But Kingsley says—_

Hermione rolled her eyes. She had a feeling she’d be hearing a lot about what Kingsley says.

_—new recruits don’t go out in the field for the first three months of training! Don’t they know that Harry and I are pros at this by now? Anyway, I’ve got to go. Mum’s screeching about the gnomes. Apparently, they got the idea into their heads to try to invade the house, and Mum wants to make sure we take care of them before they kick us out of our beds._

_Try to have a little fun, okay? You could sit your NEWTs tomorrow and pass them all with Os, so don’t study too hard. And tell Ginny to stop sending Harry kisses. I’m always in the line of fire when I take your letters from Pig._

The last inch of the parchment was blank, not even a salutation or signature to complete the letter. Hermione’s heart sank until she flipped the parchment over and saw a messy scrawl on the back.

_PS: It’s really not the same without you. Wish you were here._

_Love,  
Ron_

She held her breath as she stared at the last sentence. _Wish you were here._ He missed her! And then her eyes were drawn to the word “love,” and her heart, which had just sunk a moment ago, inflated and lifted like a helium balloon in her ribcage. Did he really love her? Just imagining he did made Hermione giddy like the girls she used to scoff at.

“What are you smiling about?” Ginny asked, staring at Hermione through sly, knowing eyes. She had a letter from Harry in her own hands, delivered simultaneously with Ron’s via Pigwidgeon.

The Head Girl composed her features and folded the letter carefully, the same way Ron had folded it originally. She could almost feel the ghost of his hands over hers, matching each turn and crease of the parchment. Later, before bed, she would take a better look at his words to see if he’d left any hints of his feelings for her between his talk about Auror training. Unfortunately, the summer had been too busy with post-war matters: funerals in abundance, trials, even ceremonies honoring the heroes of the final battle. Hermione had even made a short, disastrous trip to Australia. With everything going on, she and Ron hadn’t had much time to talk about what they were to each other, but every night, she replayed their shared kiss in her head, wondering where she’d got the audacity to throw herself at Ron in the middle of a battle the way she’d done.

“Nothing much,” Hermione finally answered. “It sounds like they’re having a grand time. What does Harry say?”

Ginny’s ears went from pale and freckled to tomato red in an instant, and the sight made Hermione miss Ron more.

However, unlike Ron, Ginny wasn’t bashful in the slightest. Her blush might have revealed her true embarrassment or pleasure, but her expression hid whatever emotion the question conjured in her. She only allowed herself a small smile, smug the way it lifted on one side. “He says Ron’s got an inflated ego, but that’s not shocking news in the slightest.”

Both girls snorted at the idea of a modest Ron and then lapsed into silence. When not embroiled in the drama of her general dislike among the students, Hermione tended to yearn, and Ron’s letter made her yearn for so many things. Stability, safety, comfort, and companionship were what she craved every night when she was alone in bed, and she envisioned those things wrapped up in a Ron Weasley package.

But yearning wasn’t practical, and if Hermione was anything, she was practical. She constantly battled the what ifs and the daydreams because, as Professor Dumbledore had told Harry once, it did not do to dwell on dreams, lest she forget to live—and forget the lives recently lost. How could she feel so much happiness imagining a future with Ron when his brother and many of their friends had died only four months ago? How could she possibly allow herself to feel pleasure when students continued to suffer inside Hogwarts’s safe walls?

How could she forget her own parents, who were still wandering around Australia without any memory of their only daughter?

“So why did you come back?” Ginny asked, shattering the silence into which they'd fallen.

Hermione shook her head to clear her mind. Her thoughts were always fluctuating between hope for the future and despair for the past. The present was just depressingly static.

“Come back?” she asked, confused.

“To Hogwarts. You were offered a job at the Ministry, too, weren’t you? So why come back?” The casual way Ginny asked the question put Hermione on alert. Ginny’s gaze sought Hermione’s, challenging her in a way.

Hermione frowned, wondering where this was going. Even though the heavy, humid weather didn’t warrant it, she suddenly wished for a fire in the grate. She wasn’t sure if the common room had just become colder, or if she had.

“I haven’t taken my NEWTs. I can’t get a job without NEWTs.”

“But you were offered one without them. Why not just take it?”

Now Hermione had an inkling of what was troubling Ginny. In the middle of the summer, when Ron and Harry had announced their plans to become Aurors instead of finishing school, Mrs. Weasley, in confused anguish, had begged and demanded them to reconsider. When it had become obvious that they would follow their own path, she had diverted her attention to Ginny, reinforcing as often as possible the necessity for Ginny to return to Hogwarts. At the time, Hermione had attributed Ginny’s dour attitude to being separated from Harry again, but now hindsight made the emotion clear.

Ginny would have given anything to have quit Hogwarts, too. Not to be with Harry, but to avoid the castle and the horrors she’d faced within the walls that last year. Suddenly, Hermione could see it all in her face, especially the bitterness and fright that lingered in the challenge in her eyes. She resented Harry and Ron for taking the opportunity to leave Hogwarts—and she resented Hermione for not taking it.

Hermione was a truthful person with no skill for lies, but even so, opening herself up to someone she wasn’t sure even liked her made her feel vulnerable. She wanted to lie, but Ginny needed to hear the real reason Hermione had returned.

“What if…” she started. She licked her dry lips, and stared into the empty fireplace. The squishy armchair she was sitting in suddenly felt like a trap, not a comfort. “What if I’d taken the job and they realized I wasn’t good enough? Yes, I helped Harry defeat Voldemort in a way. I helped keep Harry alive, and over the years, I’ve studied in such excess that I already know more than most seventh years—or so I’m told.” That had been Ron’s argument for Hermione giving up on her NEWTs. The memory of him trying to convince her made the corners of her lips lift. She had interpreted his argument as reluctance to part from her, and even though Hermione hadn’t wanted to leave him either, she’d still returned to Hogwarts.

“But if I have my NEWTs results, I’ll have proof that I’m good enough for any career I seek,” she said, her voice gone a little softer in embarrassment. “They won’t be able to say I don’t belong.”

Silence followed that statement, prompting Hermione to look up and gauge Ginny’s reaction. There was a little crease in the other girl’s brow and a softening in her eyes that looked too much like pity but could have been understanding. Finally, Ginny reached over from her armchair to place her hand on Hermione’s shoulder, and Hermione took comfort in it. So much so that her next inhale wavered on the edge of a sob.

“It’s a sad world we live in if you don’t belong in it while people like the Malfoys do. Chin up, Hermione,” Ginny said, a smile lighting her face as her hand returned to the confines of her own chair. “You are more gifted and deserving than you understand.”

o  
+  
o

Malfoy’s limping was more pronounced when he arrived outside the entrance to the Headmistress’s office later that night. For a moment, Hermione wondered if the wound was festering and why he didn’t get it healed, but then she stiffened her spine, a frown forming on her face as Malfoy approached her. She didn’t care about his well-being. He didn’t deserve her concern.

“Since when has the Head Girl had detention-granting privileges?” Malfoy asked. His face displayed no emotion except the contempt in his scowl, so it didn’t seem as though his limpy leg pained him. Not that Hermione cared. At all.

“If you had come to any of the Prefect meetings since you’d been made a Prefect fifth year, you’d know all about what privileges the Head Boy and Girl have.” She turned on her heel, leaving Malfoy to limp along behind her, and she couldn’t tell if he was exaggerating the limp in order to win her sympathy—something he’d done before, when Buckbeak had attacked him in their third year—or if he was truly too wounded to walk normally. She ignored it, focusing instead on their destination and getting there without attacking him or being attacked again. Her wand was just within reach, in the holster strapped to her arm, her reflexes primed for any emergency.

“I’ve been a bit busy the last couple years. Didn’t seem very important at the time.” His tone was neutral, but his voice was low.

“I guess Prefect responsibilities seem quite trivial when you’re plotting how to smuggle Death Eaters into the castle,” she snarled.

He stopped in the middle of the corridor, his teeth bared and his fists clenched at his side. “That’s not all I was doing!” 

Hermione spun around, her wand in her hand just in case. “Oh? Please, enlighten me. What else were you doing?”

She took deep pleasure in the way his mouth opened and closed wordlessly, his guilt apparent in his silence. There was no explanation that she would accept for his behavior during the entirety of their acquaintance, but especially in the last two years. He was just a bad seed from a bad family, and it was too late to fix him, if he’d ever been fixable.

The blush that warmed his pale cheeks provoked Hermione into further goading. She couldn’t help herself. She never had been able to stop words from coming out of her mouth once she thought them.

“That’s right,” she said as if suddenly remembering something. She took a step closer to him where he stood frozen. “Sixth year you plotted to bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts, seventh year you helped them control it, and now you’re pathetic and powerless because Harry defeated the one man who made your family scary. And I’m not talking about your father.”

His whole body shook with such force that Hermione might have thought there was an earthquake if she hadn’t felt the stable ground beneath her own feet. He closed his eyes and said through clenched teeth, his voice soft and controlled, “Don’t talk about my father. You don’t know anything.”

“I know how your family will do anything it can to save its own hide,” she taunted as he allowed her to invade his personal space. “I heard your family testify at your trial, and I know it was a load of rubbish.”

His eyes bored down into hers, cold and distant and simmering with a frosty anger. “Potter testified on our behalf.”

“Harry,” Hermione snarled, “wants to believe the best of everyone. I know why he thinks you and your parents aren’t as bad as everyone thinks they are. I know he thinks you’ve _changed_ , but I’m not so easily fooled!”

She dug a pointy finger into his shoulder blade, nearly knocking him off balance with the force of her emotion. If she could have used him as a punching bag, she would have. She needed some kind of release to ease the emotions rising to a boil inside her.

“I won’t be fooled by the likes of you. I… I want to prevent people like you from ever abusing your position and power again. It would be stupid of us to welcome you back into the fold, after everything your family has done.”

She held his gaze, refusing to blink, refusing to be the first to look away, and she saw exactly when the anger thawed, turning into a calculating curiosity.

“ _Oh_ ,” he said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “‘You’, ‘us’. I see what this is all about.”

“What?” she asked, huffing in irritation.

“Oh, no. I won’t give you the satisfaction of a response. I’m going to hold onto what I know until it benefits me.” He chuckled, and the sound raked against her nerves even more.

“You can bugger yourself, then. Let’s go. You still have a detention to serve.”

She stormed down the corridor feeling a little foolish herself. She didn’t think he understood her at all; perhaps he was just saying he did to annoy her. Still, as she listened to the sounds of his footsteps echoing behind her, she couldn’t help but feel as if he saw right through her.

The feeling lasted throughout Malfoy’s detention shelving books in the library—by hand as Hermione still had his wand. It didn’t matter how high he had to climb to put a certain book away or how far he had to reach, it didn’t matter that he sneezed at least twenty times throughout the night thanks to the dust he disturbed while rearranging ancient tombs; he seemed to bloody enjoy himself too much for Hermione’s satisfaction. More than once, she’d been tempted to push the ladder over while he was perched at the top of it, but she refrained. She only allowed herself to imagine what it might look like to watch him fall, clouds of dust erupting all around him, a stunned expression of disbelief frozen on his face. She opened the book she was holding to hide her smile, and once she had composed herself, handed the book up to Malfoy to shelve.

Three hours later, their ever-filling book cart empty and Madam Pince’s workload significantly lighter, Hermione scowled at Malfoy and he smirked back. He seemed wholly unaffected while Hermione was on edge and unhappy for no reason she could discern. Malfoy had hardly spoken a word to her since arriving at the library, but she’d caught every now and then little shakes of his head, amused chuckles, and smirks, smirks, smirks galore. She was tired of his stupid face! Did the man wear no other expression?

“You can go,” she said, turning away from him before he noticed her discontent. That was part of the problem though. Of course he’d already noticed it. He seemed to notice everything, and Hermione felt a little like she was blind to the obvious, like she’d been left out of the joke. But of course she _was_ the joke; she just hadn't heard the punchline.

“Aren’t you going to warn me to behave? Stop fighting students younger than me, stop attacking our illustrious Head Girl, etc.?”

His voice loomed over her, just behind her. She wouldn’t let him intimidate her. She rose up as tall as she could, but didn’t turn around.

“No.” She pulled his wand out from her sleeve. She did a double-take, staring at the hawthorn instrument in her hand, only really noticing it for the first time. “You got your original wand back,” she said in disbelief.

“Yes,” Malfoy hissed, snatching it from her. “Potter gave it back to me after my verdict.”

Now she faced him, watching as he stroked the springy wood as if checking for defects. After hours of constant smirking, Hermione was happy to see his lips fall, the smirk replaced with a glower.

“I think he cursed it. It doesn’t work the same anymore. Generous of him to return it damaged,” he spat.

Hermione had forgotten that wand allegiance wasn’t a widely known or understood concept, even after Harry’s defeat of Voldemort had hinged on it. She didn’t know what to say to him. She certainly didn’t know if his wand would ever be loyal to him again, so what was the point in correcting his assumption if it wouldn’t help?

“Why do you use it, then?”

His eyes blazed as he answered, his grip tightening around the wood. “Because it’s _mine_.”

His wand. His first symbol of power. He had abilities that distinguished himself and his family from Muggles, and the only way he could begin to learn to control and use those abilities was with the wand that had chosen him at the age of eleven. Without it, he was no better than a Squib. No wonder he was so attached.

And if it wasn’t fully cooperating with him, maybe that was why he hadn’t yet healed his leg. But why didn’t he go to the Hospital Wing, then?

Hermione shrugged. “Well, you’ve got it back now. Please stop fighting with other students, and please don’t bash my head into a wall again. Next time, I’ll go straight to the headmistress.”

“Like hell you will.”

She pretended she hadn’t heard his amused tone and left him standing in the middle of the stacks. But she knew he was right.

Hermione was fighting a battle against the students of Hogwarts—including Malfoy—and she couldn’t win if she received help from anyone. If she was going to convince the students that she was on their side, she would have to do it alone, without coercion from another figure of authority. She couldn’t demand their respect—they had to give it willingly.

Even as determination to win motivated her, her ghosts still whispered in her ear: what did any of her effort matter? What was the point?

**TBC**


	4. Chapter Four

The lake lapping against the shore presented a soothing backdrop to Hermione’s studying, but her concentration for Ancient Runes was as fleeting as each wave. Just when she was on the cusp of grasping a concept or writing a note, another thought distracted her, drawing her away from her studies. The constant pull and tug should have frustrated her, but instead she was lulled into a numb state of thoughtlessness, despite the overabundance of thoughts in her head.

She had her hair pinned up in a bun to keep the wind from blowing it in her face, but the breeze still managed to annoy her by rustling her roll of parchment. She had to keep an extra firm grip on her quill to prevent it from flying away like debris in a storm. Despite the annoyances of nature, Hermione had come to prefer studying outdoors. Her ghosts remained inside the castle, roaming the halls in search of a tortured student to haunt. Out here, she could focus on school work and other horrors besides the war.

Like Malfoy, for instance.

The git had been following her since his detention the week before, and he made no effort to hide the fact, either. Sure, they were taking similar classes, like Potions, Charms, and Transfiguration, but did he have to sit directly behind her in the classes they shared? Throughout their lessons, she had felt his eyes on the back of her head, and she couldn’t help but imagine a self-satisfied grin on his stupid face. His very presence was distracting, even when he wasn’t acknowledging her.

Then there were moments when she’d be alone in a corridor and gooseflesh would rise all over her arms. She didn’t have to turn around to know he was there, watching her, smirking or smug or whatever expression he deemed most appropriate—and irksome—in that instant.

It had taken five encounters in various corridors, and twice in the library, for Hermione to finally snap and confront her stalker. “Why are you following me?” she’d yelled at him, her wand at the ready in her shaking hand. Whether the shaking was from fear or anger, she wasn’t sure.

“It amuses me to see you try so hard,” he replied.

While Hermione’s body was on edge with tension, his was relaxed and nonchalant. Seeing his casualness made her see red. This was a game to him. _She_ was a game!

Her jaws were clenched together so tightly she could already feel a headache coming on, and she’d be damned if she began to cry in front of Malfoy as her eyes seemed to want to do. She certainly had no control over her unreasonable reaction to a man she had always loathed. Why this interaction had been the straw to break the manticore’s back, she had no idea and no time to analyze it anyway.

“Did I upset you?” Malfoy asked, feigning concern in exaggeration.

And because she had snapped, truth leaked out of her cracks. Somehow she would have to patch herself up later, but for now, it flowed out before she could stop it, revealing more than she dared to reveal to her enemy.

“I have to try hard, Malfoy. Harder than anyone else here! If you cared about anything, you would be trying hard, too, but you don’t care. Not about yourself or your studies or your reputation. Is there anything that you care for? Anything at all?”

Her chest heaved as she tried to control the sobs, but it was all too much—her education, her parents lost in Australia, her friends moving on with their lives without her, and, yes, the responsibility heaped on her shoulders by Professor McGonagall. When the Headmistress had offered her the Head Girl badge, there had been expectations to go along with it besides the usual ones of those in a position of leadership, and Hermione could not meet those expectations. She was there to help guide the students through their grief, and she couldn’t even master her own.

Malfoy saw her falling apart at the seams and found it amusing. Everyone was looking to her for different reasons, and she wished she could just crawl into her bed and hide from the expectations, distrust, and amusement at her expense following her everywhere she went.

Malfoy lifted his hands and took a step back as if fearing an attack. “Relax, for fuck’s sake,” he said. “It’s not like you’re the only Mudblood who has to work hard to fit in. Circe’s left tit, you’re wound up so tight.”

She marched on him now, invading his space, her wand tip pointed directly at his nose and crackling with red sparks in her agitation. “ _You’re_ one of the reasons I’m wound up this tight! Leave me alone! Stop stalking me! Please, just leave me alone!”

“I can’t,” he replied so seriously that she stepped away from him, gauging his expression and body language for a sign of that earlier nonchalance. But the amusement was gone; he was serious.

“Why not?” she asked despite herself.

In the first moment of discomposure she’d seen in him, his eyes darted away from her. “We have too much in common. No one likes us, Granger, so we have to stick together.”

“I am too liked! People… people like me. They just don’t like my position of authority over them.”

Malfoy shook his head, and the corner of his lips lifted, but there wasn’t laughter behind that half-grin. His demeanor and his following words implied pity. “Come on. Do you really think if Potter was here as Head Boy the students would be revolting against him? No, they wouldn’t. And the ever-delightful Neville Longbottom doesn’t seem to be having the same problems you are. No, you’re unlikeable. Just like me. Birds of a feather.”

The implication horrified Hermione and confirmed her worst fears. Those moments with Ginny, when she thought Ginny would rather be talking to someone else—rather be with someone else—maybe those moments hadn’t been imagined. Maybe Ginny only tolerated her for Ron and Harry’s sake. What if now that Harry was gone, everyone was treating Hermione exactly the way they would have treated her if Harry had never been her friend?

Was she really that odious?

“I’m… I’m nothing like you,” she said, her voice wavering.

He shrugged. “You can go on believing that, or you can embrace it and move on.”

“Is that how you’re… coping? You’ve embraced that no one will ever like you, so you let them use you like a punching bag and talk about you in front of your face?”

His shoulder lifted in another shrug, and then he crossed his arms. Hermione would have read it as a defensive gesture, but Malfoy was a skilled Occlumens, as she knew, so the gesture could have meant anything… or nothing.

“I know who I am,” he said. “It’s about time you figured out who you are now that Potter and Weasley are gone.”

A stabbing pain went through her chest at those words, the last of her fears confirmed. She’d been right before: Malfoy saw through everything, especially her. She might as well be a ghost for all her transparency.

That had been three days ago, and Malfoy still hadn’t stopped following her around. Hermione liked to study by the lake to get away from the students and the castle, but she realized now that she’d returned to her new favorite haunt not out of a desire to study, but to clear her mind enough to consider Malfoy.

She should have been afraid of him, or at the very least annoyed. He was stalking her after all, by every definition of the word. But since that talk when he’d called her unlikeable, she couldn’t help but feel… well, reassured by his presence. She didn’t fully understand why, and she wasn’t sure if there was another unidentifiable emotion there buried beneath the surface. She just knew that she wasn’t scared of him, and while he was still a git, she wasn’t too annoyed either.

It was only when she was inside the castle, bombarded by her responsibilities and memories, that irritation resurfaced. But the irritation was caused by all her ghosts and expectations; it was just easier to take her feelings out on Malfoy. He made himself such an accessible target.

“There you are, Hermione. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Lost in her thoughts, Hermione hadn’t seen Luna approaching until the girl was sitting right next to her. She sighed as she rolled up her parchment and closed her textbooks, officially giving up on her revision. “Is something wrong?” she asked as she carefully put away her ink pot and quill.

“No. Ginny seemed worried. She thought you might be plagued with something.” Luna’s eyes narrowed, and then she pulled a pair of Spectrespecs out of her pocket and put them on. “She was right. You _have_ been plagued.”

Hermione stifled the automatic response to roll her eyes. Before the war, Luna had been a frustrating acquaintance with whom Hermione couldn’t see eye to eye. The Ravenclaw’s flights of fancy clashed with her own rational outlook on life, and it used to baffle her how someone could believe such idiotic conspiracies. She began to understand when she, Harry, and Ron wound up at her home and had tea with her father, Xenophilius Lovegood. The madness had been nurtured from a young age, and Luna hadn’t learned any better.

She’d seen the mural Luna had painted on her bedroom ceiling, portraits of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville connected by a chain of friendship. At first Hermione had felt pity for Luna, that she hadn’t had a true friend until Dumbledore’s Army had come along, but over time she’d begun to feel a real fondness for her as well. If anything, Luna was loyal and brave. She might have lived in a delusional world, but she never let that world get in the way of what mattered.

Hermione still felt a little uncomfortable around her because she couldn’t trust herself not to argue if Luna tried to insist that some manufactured creature or conspiracy was real. Letting things go for the sake of peace was a skill that Hermione did not possess, and it was undoubtedly the number one reason she was so hated inside the castle now.

She decided to risk humoring Luna. “With what am I plagued, then?”

The Spectrespecs made Luna’s already bulbous eyes appear even larger and changed their color from blue to rainbow-hued orbs.

“Doubt. Worry. And something else I can’t quite pin down. It’s zooming around your head too fast for me to recognize it.”

“There’s no earthly way you can see that with those glasses!” Hermione insisted, her cheeks burning. Maybe Malfoy wasn’t the only one who could see right through her. Perhaps she really was as transparent as a ghost.

“Oh, no, I don’t need the glasses to see how you’re feeling. The whole castle is plagued with the same emotions. I just like the way the world looks when I wear them.” She lifted the Spectrespecs over her eyes and then pushed them back down on her nose, back and forth as if comparing the views with and without the multi-colored lenses.

Hermione wished she could put on a pair of glasses and see the world in a different light. If only the world was as simple for her as it was for Luna. With a sudden pang, she wished Ron were there to tell her that everything would turn out okay in the illogical, go with the flow way that had always infuriated her before. Now, she would welcome such reassuring, if childish, comments.

She cleared her throat. “Why were you looking for me?”

Luna shrugged and rocked from side to side. Her hands were clasped loosely over her drawn knees, a blithe smile on her face as her eyes focused on something Hermione couldn’t see.

“My mum always said that the things we lose have a way of coming back to us. So far that’s been true for me, but I’m not so sure anymore. What do you think?”

The question startled Hermione so much that she didn’t know how to answer. Her first instinct was to be reasonable and say that some things that are lost can never be returned, but it was clear that such an answer wasn’t what Luna was looking for.

How did people comfort one another without flat out lying to their faces? Was it acceptable to lie for the sake of other people’s feelings? She had to remind herself that some people couldn’t handle emotions with logic like she could. She had to find another way.

“What… what makes you ask, Luna?”

Luna’s gaze lowered to her knees, and with her dreamy stare shielded, she looked less odd, more normal, though the Spectrespecs still gave her an air of eccentricity. She just looked… sad. Hermione had seen her annoyed, angry, happy, but never sad.

“I haven’t spoken to my father since the war. Since I found out how he tried to turn you and Ronald and Harry over to the Death Eaters.”

Hermione’s lips compressed, but she tried her best to reassure Luna, even if she didn’t mean the words. “I’m sure he meant well.” Her voice sounded hard and unconvincing, and she winced at the involuntary harshness.

But Luna nodded as if she hadn’t heard the false note. “He did. I’m all the family he has left, and he’s all mine. But that’s no reason to betray my friends.” She looked up at the sky, and Hermione wondered if there was another reason Luna had donned the Spectrespecs besides the reason she’d stated. “My mum was my best friend, you know. After she died, I thought I’d never have friends again. He could have found another way to save me.”

Hermione silently agreed. She’d been so angry after they’d left the Lovegood residence, and not long after that they’d been captured by Snatchers and taken to Malfoy Manor. If one thing could be said about Luna Lovegood, it was that she was selfless and brave where her father was selfish and cowardly. She suddenly realized that Luna’s bravery must have been a direct result of her feelings for her friends. Perhaps if she’d continued to only have her father for a companion she would have turned out just the same as him.

She patted Luna’s arm awkwardly, uncertain of her reception, but Luna didn’t pull away. “He was afraid, Luna. He wasn’t thinking clearly. The war had the ability to bring out the worst or the best in people, and I think it mostly brought out the worst. It still does. You don’t… you shouldn’t punish him forever. Everything turned out all right, didn’t it?”

Luna’s lips curled up. “You’re a very smart girl, Hermione, smarter than a lot of Ravenclaws, but I wouldn’t say everything turned out all right.”

Hermione figured she was teasing, but she corrected herself anyway. “No, I know. Um.” Tears stung her eyes, but as she tried to blink them away, she knew she wouldn’t succeed. “I’m going to tell you a secret now. One that not even Harry and Ron know.”

Luna put her hand on top of Hermione’s still resting on Luna’s arm. She didn’t look at the Head Girl, but Hermione knew she was listening.

“Remember when I went to Australia this summer? To find my parents? I told everyone that I found them and returned their memories, and they stayed in Australia as an extra precaution. In case of retaliation from escaped Death Eaters after the war.”

“But you lied,” Luna said.

Now tears spilled down Hermione’s cheeks, but she didn’t wipe them away because both of her hands were being grasped in Luna’s light grip.

“Yes. I lied. I found them, but I couldn’t reverse the spell. They called the police on me, thinking I was troubled or high because I waved a stick in their faces and said silly words. I told everyone I’d succeeded because I didn’t want them to know I had failed.”

“I knew!” Luna said brightly, one of her hands shifting to Hermione’s back to rub circles on her shoulder blades. “I knew you were lying.”

Hermione wasn’t sure how that made her feel. If Luna had noticed, why hadn’t anyone else? Or were Luna and Malfoy the only two people with this superpower to see right through her? Perhaps the rest of her friends had believed her because they hadn’t wanted to see any other possibility. Or maybe they were dense. Hermione didn’t know.

“Thank you for not telling anyone,” she said with a sniffle. Now she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe, feeling foolish for falling apart so easily. She’d been trying to cheer up Luna somehow, and instead Luna had ended up comforting her.

“The point I was trying to make,” she said, eyes tear-free now, “is that sometimes the things we lose don’t come back to us. But if you have the ability to retrieve something you’ve lost, go after it. Don’t let it go. Your father was wrong, Luna, but he was scared. Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and I, we’re all fine now, so you don’t need to keep punishing him. Forgive him before he’s gone forever.”

Luna kept her gaze averted, and Hermione worried she’d said something tactless again. The logical answer she’d tried to suppress had spilled out of her mouth, as words had a tendency to do for her, and now she couldn’t take them back.

But Luna’s smile widened, and she took the Spectrespecs off, her eyes clear and beaming. “That’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me. I’m going to go write him a letter right now!”

Before Hermione knew what was happening, Luna was leaning over and wrapping her in a tight embrace, and then she stood up and skipped back up to the castle, her long, dirty blonde hair swinging behind her.

**TBC**


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood in this chapter.

Sharing her secret with Luna had lifted a burden from Hermione’s shoulders that she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying. Even though she still had a multitude of problems, too many to deal with even if she knew how to, Hermione’s mind felt a little clearer. She could focus on more pressing issues than her guilt over erasing her parents’ memories and shipping them off to another continent. At the present time, she couldn’t do anything to fix that, but she could do something about Malfoy. So the next time Hermione felt Malfoy’s eyes on her, she approached him again, this time with a more level head.

He’d followed her out of the Great Hall after dinner as she returned to the Gryffindor common room. In the seventh floor corridor, she turned a corner and then stopped and waited for him to make the same turn. Her lips twitched up into a smug smile as he nearly ran her over, his eyes wide in surprise. The shock passed quickly and his expression became neutral once more.

“Ambushing me?”

“Let’s talk,” Hermione said. Without giving him a chance to argue, she stalked down the corridor to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, and as he’d done for the last week, he followed her. As Malfoy waited with an impatient frown, she passed in front of the tapestry three times, wishing for a safe location to have a discussion with her enemy. On the wall across from the tapestry, a door appeared. It looked no different than any of the classroom doors, but Hermione still hesitated in front of it.

Malfoy came to stand beside her, moving no closer than he had to. When she peeked up at him, his eyes were intent on the door, his brows drawn low over his eyes. He was as reluctant to enter the room as she was. The last time they’d both been inside, a giant monster made of voracious fire created by Vincent Crabbe had nearly killed them. If Harry hadn’t gone back for Malfoy, he would have died in the flames with Crabbe. She wondered if he owed Harry a life debt now like Peter Pettigrew had owed Harry. Did Malfoy even know?

Hermione was the first to move, reaching for the door handle and pushing it open before she had time to think of the consequences. Fiendfyre was one of only a few materials that had the ability to destroy a Horcrux, and she’d never wondered before if perhaps the Room of Requirement had also been destroyed in the last attack of Crabbe’s life.

The room she entered was one she’d never been in before, but it was certainly intact, no char marks to be seen. The walls sloped around in a circle, like Gryffindor Tower, but the space inside was much smaller and more sparsely furnished than her comfortable common room. In fact, the only pieces of furniture were two arm chairs in the center of the circular floor facing each other as if in a standoff and a multitude of fluffy pillows and wooden shields leaning against the sloped wall. Portraits hung around the room, their occupants staring at Hermione and Malfoy with wide, expectant eyes.

“Who are you?” Hermione asked.

“Witnesses!” a woman in a portrait to the right of the door said. She’d been painted in dull, somber colors that contrasted with the pink, frilly dress she wore and her ringleted, yellow hair. In the background of her portrait, sheep bleated in support.

“Witnesses?” Malfoy asked.

“In case you attack me and leave me here to die,” Hermione answered with a grim frown.

“Me attack you?” Malfoy replied in outrage. “What about what you would do to me? You did let six students beat the bloody hell out of me not too long ago, if you remember!”

She spun around, the color rising in her face in anger and embarrassment. “Well, you begged me to leave!”

“ _Begged?_ Hardly!”

“And you slammed me up against a wall and tried to do me in!”

“I wouldn’t have—” 

“ENOOOUUUGH already!” the woman in the pastoral portrait groaned. “Jesus Christ, if it’s not one thing it’s another! At least shut the door before you begin dueling!”

Hermione stepped out of the doorway and Malfoy followed her into the room, both of them heated and raring for a go at each other. As soon as the door clicked shut, she said, “We won’t be dueling.” The portrait _hmph_ ed—whether in disagreement or disappointment wasn’t quite clear. “I just wanted to set some things straight.”

“Then by all means, shall we?” Malfoy said with a gallant, if sarcastic, gesture towards the armchairs in the middle of the room.

Hermione eyed the selection of shields before she took a seat, but arming herself seemed like a good way to tempt fate. Provocation notwithstanding, she honestly didn’t want to fight Malfoy. She’d never wanted to fight anyone if she could help it. The last few years had forced her to do things she’d never thought herself capable of, but if she had the choice, she would never choose violence if there was a better way.

Sitting in his chair, his legs sprawled to the sides and one of his infuriating smirks on his face, he asked, “Now what’s this all about?”

Hermione breathed in through her nose and held her breath for a moment before releasing it. Sometimes the simple act of breathing brought her some perspective. She’d never thought herself an emotional creature, but that was before she’d met Ron. Now she knew that her emotions sometimes got the best of her. Stabilizing her breathing was one way to give control back to her mind before she did something else she would regret.

“I don’t know what you’re about, but I wanted you to know that I will find out. Unless you want to go ahead and tell me.”

She couldn’t tell if the confusion on his face was genuine or not, but his wrinkled brow and condescending glare set off alarm bells.

“What I’m about?” he said. “Are you planning to interrogate me?”

“That would be stupid,” she replied. “I’d be daft to ask you questions and expect an honest answer—even if you weren’t an Occlumens.”

He bristled. “How do you know that?”

Raising her nose a little higher in the air, she said, “That doesn’t matter now. I just want you to answer one thing for me. If you answer honestly, I’ll help you out. If you lie to me or refuse to answer, I won’t.”

She could tell he was unnerved by her knowledge of him by the way his hands clenched the arms of his chair, and he’d sat up a little straighter as if she finally deserved his full attention. Still, he laughed in that scoffing way that was supposed to make her feel foolish.

“With what? What could you possibly do to help me?”

She nodded toward his legs. “Your injury. Tell me why it hasn’t been healed and I’ll heal it for you. Lie or refuse and you can continue to suffer. Your choice.”

He scoffed at her, his smirk returning, but there was something about his stiff expression that boosted Hermione’s confidence.

“Who says it hasn’t been healed already?”

“Come on, Malfoy; I saw the cut. It ran deep and bled for who knows how long. You have a limp now, did you know? If you’d healed it or received treatment for it, you wouldn’t be limping. And Madame Pomfrey’s healed worse, believe me, so don’t say it _is_ fully healed. We both know that’s a lie.”

Her heart beat a little harder, sending echoing reverberations into her throat, as Malfoy’s eyes grew darker. All sign of condescension and amusement were gone from his face, and Hermione’s lips twitched up in an expression of smug success for unsettling him.

“Since when have you been a Legilimens?” he asked, his teeth clenched together. A vein in his temple throbbed and rage burned in his eyes.

“I’m just observant.”

He sneered. “Look at you. You’ve been acting more like a Slytherin these last few weeks. I just don’t understand what you get out of this deal. A job well done for healing your enemy?” His eyes brightened with epiphany. “Oh. That’s what it is, isn’t it? A chance to redeem yourself. You still feel guilty for leaving me to the mercy of a mob, and this is your chance to correct your mistake. Well, I won’t bite. In fact, _you_ can bite my arse.”

“As delightful as that sounds, I think I’ll pass,” she said, rising from her chair. She looked down her nose at him and she felt powerful towering over his injured body.

“I’ll figure out why you let those students beat you up. It’s not like you had a fighting chance. I had your wand, and before that it had already been taken from you. To me, it looked like you wanted to be bloodied and injured, but you didn’t rat on them, did you? I would have heard. So you didn’t provoke them to attack you in order to get them in trouble. And you didn’t treat your leg, either, so maybe you _wanted_ to be hurt. Maybe…” And her own epiphany came to her, though she didn’t know if it was a wild idea on her part or if there was any truth to it. “Maybe if you’re physically hurt, you won’t have to think about the war. What you did. Your lot in life now. Maybe the pain distracts you from how pathetic you are.”

His limbs trembled. That’s what she noticed most. His whole body seemed to be wracked with tremors of a deep emotion. The rage was still there, frozen into his expression, but his body revealed his true feelings even though she couldn’t interpret them.

“That’s a nice theory,” he said after several moments of tense silence, in which their eyes had not broken contact, “but a little too dramatic for me. Nice try though. Stick to being a bitch—you’re better at that than psychology.”

“Oh, Malfoy,” she said with a sigh, “you flatter me.”

Then she left him in the Room of Requirement, trembling in his chair.

o  
+  
o

Hermione was rather proud of the way she’d handled herself the day before, even if her hands had shaken a little after Malfoy had called her a bitch. She’d needed to remind herself that he’d been backed into a corner and had attempted to hurt her however he could. Gross name-calling came naturally to him. That didn’t mean what he said was _true_.

Sometimes she wondered if she was a… bitch without meaning to be. Maybe that’s why no one liked her. Maybe that’s why she found it so hard to connect to other people. He had hit a sore spot for her, but the high of leaving him in her dust, unnerved and affected by _her_ for once, overrode her insecurities.

She didn’t dwell on the encounter too much as she composed a letter to Ron, her heart beating erratically with each stroke of her quill. As dark and hopeless as she’d begun to feel there at Hogwarts, the thought of Ron or one of his letters allowed her to escape her ghosts and feel some rare joy. If pain distracted Malfoy from his ghosts of the war, the thought of Ron distracted her.

_Dear Ron,_

Was that too formal? She crossed out what she’d written. Would leaving out the greeting all together be too casual? Biting her lip, she added it back in, still undecided on the proper greeting.

_~~Dear Ron~~ Dear Ron, _

_Thank you for the box of chocolates and the books! Give my thanks to Harry and your mum as well. I can’t wait to wear my new scarf when the castle gets chillier, and your mum’s sweet buns have always been my favorites. Ginny, Neville, Luna and I celebrated my birthday with Kreacher in the kitchens—_

Her three friends had surprised her with a cake baked and decorated quite decadently by Kreacher. If her parents had been around to see, they would have been scandalized by all the chocolates and sweets Hermione had consumed.

_—so I didn’t feel quite as lonely as I could have. I hope you and Harry are learning a lot. Please be careful. I worry about you—both of you. Most of the lowlier Death Eaters might try to slither away and avoid conflict, but you never know how many were as fanatical as Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty Crouch, Jr. If you remember, the Longbottoms had been tortured after ~~You-Know-Who~~ Voldemort lost his power in 1981, and they’d been trained and highly talented Aurors._

_I guess what I’m trying to say is… please try to stay out of trouble. I know the three of us have had a knack for finding danger over the years, and things may seem safer now that Voldemort is gone. But this is the time when his followers will feel most desperate. Please remember your training and don’t try to be the hero. I need you_

She blinked at the words uncomprehendingly for a moment. She’d let her emotions get the best of her and had written what she truly felt, but were they words Ron needed to read? Did he want to read them? Her quill hovered over the “I,” just about to strike those three dangerous words out. Then she thought better of it. If she’d learned anything in the last three weeks, it was that hiding her emotions made her look like an unlikeable, tactless bitch. Harry and Ron knew her better than anyone, but she still didn’t want to give Ron any reason to think of her that way. Besides, if she wanted to further her relationship with him, maybe she needed to take some initiative.

_I need you to stay safe._

_Love,  
Hermione_

_PS: Quidditch has been rubbish. Gryffindor lost to Ravenclaw yesterday._

Most of the students were spending their Sunday afternoon outside. It was a warm day, with a crisp, gentle breeze. The kind of day that tasted like autumn and reminded everyone that summer days were dwindling. The corridors and staircases leading up to the Owlery were deserted, and Hermione let herself smile as she ambled through the castle.

As she tied her letter to the leg of one of the school’s owls, the door to the Owlery opened, and Malfoy stood at the entrance, his face forbidding. Her lips instantly dropped, but she finished sending the owl off before turning her attention to him, her arms crossed protectively over her chest.

“I couldn’t go to the Hospital Wing or Madame Pomfrey would have reported me,” he said by way of greeting.

“What?” Hermione asked, brows creasing in confusion.

“Why my leg hasn’t been healed. I can’t do it myself, and if I’d seen Madame Pomfrey, she would have reported me to McGonagall for fighting, and _she_ would have reported me to the Ministry.”

Hermione shook her head slowly, trying to understand his explanation. “But you weren’t fighting. You were attacked!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered with a shrug. “No one would believe me if I claimed I hadn’t provoked them, even if it was the truth.”

“Is it the truth?”

His eyes narrowed, and he hissed out, “Yes, it is. _They_ attacked _me_. _They_ disarmed _me_ before I could even draw my wand.”

“Okay, okay, you didn’t provoke them,” she conceded.

He looked away in agitation, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. “It doesn’t matter what the truth was. If the Ministry got wind that I was involved in a fight, I’d be kicked out of school and arrested. Those were the terms of my probation, remember? I know McGonagall told you and Longbottom about it. Now, will you heal me?”

Hermione glanced out the window and sighed. The owl was long gone, but it carried the only happiness she could find in the castle, even though Ron was miles away, too far to truly be a part of her life now. She turned her back on her escaping joy and said to her expectant enemy, “I need to get a few things from Gryffindor Tower first. Meet me outside the Room of Requirement again in an hour.”

o  
+  
o

They stepped inside the same circular room they’d used for their previous discussion, but the furnishings had completely changed. Gone were the shields and pillows that had edged the room days ago. A large, empty fireplace was set into the sloped wall across from the entrance, a stack of firewood on the hearth. The portraits were still hanging on the wall as witnesses, but the two armchairs in the center of the room had been switched out for a hospital bed and a wooden chair to the right. Tables and cabinets adorned the edges of the walls with colorful vials, books, and instruments that might have been seen in the Hospital Wing.

“Well,” Hermione started. She closed the door behind them and then eyed Malfoy with haughty authority. “Hop up on the bed, then.”

He didn’t say anything as he laid down but stared up at the ceiling silently.

Hermione took a seat in the chair next to the bed and opened her magically extended beaded handbag. If her hands shook a little from the memories associated with the bag, she didn’t acknowledge it, but she couldn’t help but feel like the room was suddenly crowded with unwanted ghosts.

“Maybe I should take a look at the injury first,” she said in an unsteady voice as she deposited the bag onto the bedside table.

Malfoy didn’t seem to notice the state of her nerves as he was still staring upwards, his lips tight and his brows creased. “You think?”

“Er, I’m going to have to look under your robes,” she said, her face beet red.

A smirk came to his lips, but he still avoided her eyes, for which she was thankful. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not in the habit of going bare-arsed. I’m decent.”

She snorted despite herself, her lips twitching up in a smile. His remark had cleared the air, and she pulled his robes up his left leg with less embarrassment, carefully keeping his pelvic region covered nonetheless.

She didn’t gasp, but her stomach lurched at the sight before her. One trembling hand touched the end of the cut, now nearly a scar, where it wrapped around the inside of his knee. The gash curled around his leg in a jagged line to the front of his thigh, almost all the way up to the outside of his hip. It wasn’t a clean cut. It looked like someone had taken a knife and sliced him as slowly and roughly as possible, but it had to have been done with a wand, right? As her fingers whispered over the still-healing wound, goosebumps rose in his flesh, making the hair on his thighs stand straight up. Malfoy even sucked his breath in with a loud hiss, but his head was turned away, refusing to look at her or the injury.

The cut itself was red and puckered, closed but still oozing a bit, definitely inflamed. This was worse than when she had splinched Ron. At least Ron had been unconscious while Hermione had healed him.

Her fingers slowly traced up to the top of the wound, and Malfoy released his breath with a hiss.

 _“Granger!”_ he warned, his eyes suddenly wide open and focused on her.

“What?” she asked, bemused by his reaction.

“Stop with the touching and get on with the healing!”

She looked down at her hand and realized how close it was to his crotch—and how gently she’d been caressing his skin. Heat rushed to her head so fast she felt dizzy, but she snatched her hand away, completely mortified even though she hadn’t meant to feel Malfoy up. She averted her eyes from his groin, praying silently for a lack of reaction to her in _that_ area.

Clearing her throat and steadying her breath, she said, “I can’t heal it like this. I’m going to have to cut it back open.”

Malfoy sat straight up. _“What?”_ If he’d involuntarily felt amorous before, her words certainly would have cooled the situation in an instant.

“It’s already mostly closed. If I’m going to heal it, I’ll need to clean the wound and let the medicine soak in. It will get infected if it stays like this,” she explained calmly and rationally. “More infected,” she amended with a wary look at the swollen gash.

While Malfoy made tortured faces, she pulled her handbag back into her lap and rummaged around inside it, looking for the potions she would need for the job. Everything she’d packed for Harry’s Horcrux search was still inside, virtually untouched since the fall of Voldemort. A foggy, blue vial rolled out from under her fingertips to the corner of the bag, and Hermione reached inside, her arm entrenched up to her shoulder, to pull it out. “I can give you a sleeping potion so that you aren’t conscious while I work,” she said as she studied the label.

“So you can carve your name into my leg? I don’t think so,” was his charming, snappy response.

Hermione pointedly refused to let her eyes wander to her inner forearm, where her Mudblood brand still shone pearly white on her skin. With a start, she realized that Malfoy was branded as well. During his trial the past summer, he’d had to show his Dark Mark to the court as evidence. Like the other Death Eaters who had stood trial, Malfoy’s Mark had faded and turned into a scar, the color of its lines now pink instead of black. Hermione hadn’t seen the Mark personally since their return to Hogwarts, for which she was thankful, but she’d seen it from a distance as a member of the audience at his trial. Naturally, since returning to Hogwarts, he kept his arm carefully covered at all times.

“I promise, the last thing I want is to be anywhere on you,” she replied, annoyed. “But if you won’t take the sleeping draught, you’ll just have to take the pain.”

“Fine,” he replied stoically as he crossed his arms protectively over his chest.

Hermione got up to inspect the tools the Room of Requirement had provided for her use and found a scalpel, alcohol disinfectant, and gauze. She brought them all back to Malfoy’s bedside, laying them out clearly on the side table.

“Okay,” she said, as much to herself as to him. She doused some gauze in disinfectant and wiped down the line of the cut, the strong smell of the alcohol burning her nose. She wondered if the room had provided Muggle disinfectant instead of a potion for her benefit. Even now, after seven years in the wizarding world, sometimes Muggle methods of healing felt safer to her than the magic forms, especially when she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing.

She didn’t tell Malfoy that she wasn’t particularly trained in Healing. He would have freaked out and refused to be treated. But while she, Harry, and Ron had been on the run, she had read books on magical Healing that she had packed in her beaded bag, knowing that their task was going to be dangerous and that they might have been on their own for most of their journey. Good thing she had prepared sufficiently. She had never imagined how alone the three of them would be. She’d known that their task would have isolated them, but the Death Eaters’ take-over of the Ministry had made them outlaws.

Recalling the chapter on Muggle surgery she had read in the _Sushruta Samhita_ , she took a steady breath to steady her hands, and then gently pierced the skin at the top of Malfoy’s scar, near his hip. He flinched and hissed, but after a moment, he stilled, his hands clenched in the bed sheets, and Hermione continued to trace the cut all the way down to his knee with the scalpel. Blood ran down his leg, staining the sheets under him, and Hermione wiped it up when it got in the way, but didn’t worry herself over the red rivulets that striped his leg, taking the shape of bloody, external veins.

"Oh my!" a voice said from the painting hanging right above the bed. Most of the subjects of the paintings hanging around the room had huddled into this one frame to observe—to its original occupant's annoyance.

"I hope she knows what she's doing!" Little Bo Peep said dubiously.

"Is he supposed to bleed that much?" another voice asked.

Hermione looked up. "Would you lot please shut up? I'm trying to concentrate."

Frowns were shared inside the crowded painting, but, thankfully, they kept their comments to themselves.

After Hermione opened the wound, she cleaned it up and dabbed some essence of dittany, the last of her store from the Horcrux search, down his leg. There wasn’t much of the brown potion left, so she had to apply it in a thinner layer than she would have liked. She bit her lip, hoping it would be enough. What would Malfoy do to her if she promised to heal him but couldn’t due to a lack of materials? _She_ wouldn’t be able to forgive herself for breaking her promise.

As she dabbed the potion over the wound, Malfoy’s body began to tremble. The shaking continued as she wrapped his leg in gauze, and nonsensical words of comfort spilled out of her mouth as a result, trying to quell the tremors and soothe him. Her hands gentled on his leg. As she wrapped the gauze around his thigh, she slowed her movements and made comforting gestures. One hand caressed his knee as she pulled the wrap under his leg. Fingers fluttered over his skin, distracting him from the pain.

When she finished dressing the wound, she sat back, but Malfoy continued to shake.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“What do you think?” he replied as he grit his teeth, his eyes clenched shut.

She dug around inside her beaded bag for a bit until she found a Calming Draught.

“Here.”

He took the vial from her but with mistrust in his eyes. “What is it?”

“A Calming Draught.” He still seemed wary, so she held up her hands. “Promise.”

Even though he still didn’t seem to trust her, he drank the potion, and that said more to Hermione about his desperation than anything else could have.

Instantly, the tremors began to subside, and Malfoy laid back in the bed as if all his bones had disintegrated. His eyes fluttered, and Hermione could tell he was fighting to keep them open. The potion itself didn’t cause drowsiness, but it allowed him to relax enough to be able to sleep. It seemed to her that he needed as much sleep as he could get. His eye was still a little puffy and the scratches on his face hadn’t completely healed from his fight a week ago. Such shallow wounds should only require time, rest, and ice to heal, but if he wasn’t sleeping or using an ice pack for his yes, then the healing process would take longer.

Malfoy’s eyes drooped closed. “Are you going to leave me here?” he asked, his voice already heavy with sleep.

Hermione hesitated. She _had_ planned to leave as soon as she’d finished treating him, but she’d also expected him to get up and walk out on his own. Even though he was a hateful git who didn’t deserve her kindness, she would feel guilty if she left him there alone.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” she answered.

His left hand turned over, obviously inviting her to hold it, and she wondered how out of it Malfoy was for him to seek her comfort.

But she gave it to him, placing her hand in his and grasping his ice cold fingers until they warmed.

She tried to make herself as comfortable as she could in her uncushioned wooden chair, and as Malfoy drifted off to sleep, she couldn’t help but stroke the skin of his arm gently. When he began to snore, she let herself run her fingers through his hair, caressing his scalp the way her mother used to soothe her. It was all she knew how to do, and she only let herself do it because he wasn’t conscious to witness her tenderness.

She was surprised when he began to groan in his sleep, his limbs twitching. As she entwined her fingers in his, soothing him enough to settle him, she wondered what kind of nightmares plagued him enough to overcome the effects of a Calming Draught—and whether they were similar to her own.

o  
+  
o

Hermione had released his hand as soon as he began to stir from his slumber, unsure of his reaction to her touching him with such intimacy. In the hour it had taken him to awake, she’d had plenty of time to inspect him while he slept. At some point, he’d stopped fidgeting and groaning, and the creases in his brow had smoothed out. Even while unconscious, he’d still looked spoiled and privileged, exactly like the git he always was when awake. But there was something innocent about him, too. Maybe the lack of a smirk or the absence of condescension in his expression left room for the innocence. He reminded her of a naughty child who constantly wreaked havoc during the day, but at night, when exhausted and clutching a teddy bear to his chest, it was difficult to deny he was still just a child, no matter how naughty.

When Malfoy began to wake, Hermione had released her hold on him and exited the room. She’d left before he’d become fully conscious.

Now, lying in bed hours later, her mind was in turmoil. Healing Malfoy had been the right thing to do. He had been completely right about her (as always). She _had_ been attempting to assuage her guilt for letting those students attack him, and she’d used the thinnest excuse possible to try to accomplish her goal. Not that she wasn’t curious as to why he hadn’t received treatment for his leg. That question had concerned her more than she cared to admit, but the truth had been less important to her than fixing her wrong.

She’d done the right thing… and yet she felt as if she’d betrayed the students of Hogwarts and the memories of those that had fallen in the war. What would Dennis Creevey think if he knew that she’d healed Malfoy’s wounds after allowing Dennis and his friends to wound him in the first place? Dennis and the other five students had been kinder to her since that night—kinder as in they had shown indifference toward her instead of outright dislike—but they would certainly take up their torches and pitchforks if they knew what she’d done for a Death Eater. Never mind the rest of the students in the school who hadn’t been given a reprieve to abuse Malfoy like she’d given Dennis’s mob.

Again she asked herself, what had they fought the war for? The answer floated just out of her reach, keeping her dreams at bay as it drew the ghosts back in.

**TBC**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Google-fu led me to information about the Sushruta Samhita, which is a Classical Sanskrit medical text from the 6th Century BC.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't planning on writing a Draco POV chapter until chapter eight at the earliest, but considering the beginning of the original chapter six, I thought a Draco POV now was needed. My updates probably won't be as consistent as they were with the first five chapters because I'm going to be writing new chapters instead of editing already written ones, but I'll try to get them out as fast as I can.
> 
> Reviews appreciated!

Draco could feel tears leaking out of the corner of his closed eyes. He knew that he was dreaming and that the dream was sad. In a way, it wasn’t actually sad. He felt warm and peaceful as gentle fingers stroked his hair and caressed his cheek—and that in itself was nice. But the sound of his mother’s murmuring voice spilling words of comfort was the cause of the tears. He knew it was a dream, and he knew she wasn’t there.

He yearned for her in this hostile environment, where students felt free to attack him for existing and where his entrance in a room was met with glares. He'd received similar treatment (minus the random hexes and beatings he'd enjoyed from mobs of students since the beginning of term) during his sixth year, when his father had been imprisoned in Azkaban thanks to Potter and his gang of do-gooders. His sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts had been the two worst years of Draco's life, but he’d at least had his mother’s letters supporting him, encouraging him, and worrying for him. Here he felt abandoned. As part of his probation, contact between Draco and his parents was strictly prohibited. He may have escaped a fate in Azkaban with his father, but Hogwarts’ walls had become his new prison.

His dream evolved, and his mother’s voice faded away into a sibilant hiss that served as background noise in a new landscape. The dream fed off the darkness and loneliness he felt by showing him a tantalizing vision of the parlor at Malfoy Manor, but when his Aunt Bellatrix appeared with a knife pressed to Hermione Granger’s throat, he realized his dreams were no escape.

He relived the memory, unable to change the course of the nightmare for a more pleasant vision. He’d tried. Night after night as various memories from the war resurfaced, he always knew he was dreaming but couldn’t influence the events in any way except the way they actually occurred.

Granger screamed as Aunt Bellatrix Crucio'd her, and he cowered near the fireplace, his hands shaking to hear the blood curdling sound. He couldn’t look in her direction, just like he couldn’t meet Granger’s or Potter’s or Weasley’s eyes when his parents had eagerly asked him to identify them. He didn’t want the responsibility of signing their death warrants, even if he never made the killing blow. It didn’t make any sense; he’d always hated the three of them, the golden students of Hogwarts, Dumbledore’s favorite pet Gryffindors. He _hated_ them, but he didn't have it in him to execute them.

Granger screamed again as Aunt Bellatrix carved into her arm and demanded information. Something about Gringotts and a sword. Even Draco’s mother looked uncertain about this line of questioning, her fingernails digging into Draco’s shoulder. He turned his back to the torture, trying to control his urge to vomit. He couldn’t embarrass his family further by showing such weakness. His fists clenched at his sides as he wondered why he wasn't stronger. Why couldn’t he have just killed Dumbledore when he’d had the chance? The man had been at his mercy and weak. Draco had had possession of Dumbledore’s wand. It would have been too easy!

Instead, as Aunt Bellatrix had reminded anyone who would listen as often as she could, he was a weak and foolish boy too useless to be anything but a disappointment to his family. If Potter hadn’t succeeded in defeating the Dark Lord, who knew what he would have done to the Malfoys in punishment for all their failures. His mother had even lied to the Dark Lord's face. If Potter had been killed at the Battle of Hogwarts, perhaps Voldemort would have killed Narcissa for lying about Potter’s death....

There was no use dwelling on what could have happened. The memories of what had actually happened were awful enough to live with.

Aunt Bellatrix had Granger pinned to the ground, her arm pulled out to the side as his aunt crouched over it with her wand in hand. The screams had turned into whimpers, and Granger’s head fell to the side, her eyes boring into Draco’s unseeingly as her tears pooled onto the floor.

The accusation he imagined there startled him awake, making him gasp for breath as he sat up. The chair next to the bed sat empty, as did the room, and as he wiped his face, Draco hoped Granger had left before the tears had fallen. The last thing he needed was for the Head Girl to have something over him. He was the one who was supposed to be in control of their dynamic, the holder of her secrets, an ever-present shadow following her and unsettling her in the process. He’d already admitted too much weakness to her when he’d admitted the reason he’d been limping around the castle on an infected leg.

Speaking of… he pulled the blanket away, but his leg was bandaged up from knee to hip. A dull, throbbing pain emanated from the wound, making him aware of the shape of the cut, but the pain was much more manageable than it had been the day after the attack. In fact, underneath the bandages, his leg was already starting to itch, a sure sign of healing. The blood-stained sheets under him made his throat run dry, and he averted his gaze before he became too lightheaded. 

He stood up from the bed, and while a jolt of pain shot through his leg, he could stand on it and bend it much easier than he had a couple hours before. He hated to admit Granger had done anything right, but in this case he was grateful. Not only had she healed him, she’d solved a mystery he’d been hesitant to solve himself.

Testing the limits of his leg, he hobbled around the edge of the room, his fingers pressing against the stone walls here and there. The inhabitants of the portraits followed him from frame to frame around the perimeter of the room, observing in hushed whispers, but thankfully they didn’t pester him too much. The place seemed to be intact, unaffected by the Fiendfyre that had ravaged its insides months ago, and he released a breath in relief. One mystery solved.

With a last look at the bed, and the last remnants of the dream slipping away from his memory, he exited the room and paced in front of the door, back and forth, back and forth. He pictured the Room of Hidden Things, with its piles of junk discarded or forgotten by former Hogwarts students. He pictured the Vanishing Cabinet standing in the midst of history’s wreckage, whole, fixed, salvaged from the flames. Singe marks unfurled around the edges of the door as if it was being burnt in real time, and he knew when the Room had finished transforming from the hundreds of times he’d entered the same room during his sixth year.

He put his hand on the doorknob, his breath unsteady in anticipation.

“Malfoy,” a female voice said.

He jumped back and spun around to face the intruder, his eyebrows drawing down in frustration. He was always interrupted just on the verge of discovery. The last time he'd made it this far, a mob of students had cornered him and chased him down to the dungeons, leaving him with the injured and bloody leg Granger had healed only an hour before.

“Weasley,” he answered, utilizing his Occlumency to compose himself. He suppressed the urge to wipe his cheeks one more time for tell-tale tears and compartmentalized his mission to the back of his mind.

Ginny Weasley looked like a woman on her own mission, her gaze set on Draco and her approach determined to reach him before he could flee. The corners of her lips lifted up into an insincere smile that didn’t reach her suspicious eyes.

“I thought I knew you better after last year, but term has barely started and I have to admit you’ve shocked me already.”

“Have I? How’s that?” Draco asked as if he didn’t care about the answer. He didn’t really, but he needed to be careful around Ginny Weasley. She had close connections to the Ministry via her family and boyfriend. That wasn’t to say Granger didn’t, because she certainly had the same ties, but Granger had been off all term, too concerned with herself and her turmoil to be a true threat to Draco.

Ginny Weasley, on the other hand, saw as much as Draco did. She seemed to excel at ignoring trauma in order to function in her day to day life, just like Draco. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Weasley was an Occlumens herself. And if she saw through Draco, if she saw too much, he could wind up in Azkaban with his father, separated from his mother more completely and for much longer than his current sentence required.

Weasley looked at the door Draco had almost entered and then back at him with a clarity that rooted him to the spot. He felt his frown deepen involuntarily.

“I _thought_ you had a distaste for violence. I also thought you knew better than to sneak around starting trouble.”

Draco bristled. “Me starting trouble? Where would you get that bloody idea?”

“Observation and speculation. Maybe no one else has noticed—or maybe no one else cares—but I’ve seen you following Hermione around. She would never admit it to me if you were bothering her, but I can tell. She hasn’t been the same since the war ended, and you’re aggravating things.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “I even think you’re the one provoking people into rebelling against her.”

Draco snorted at that, the tension releasing from his body. She hadn’t guessed his true purpose. Annoying Granger was fun and all, but she was an amusing diversion while he tried to complete his goal. And, in fact, she had helped him take a step further in reaching it. _Literally,_ he thought as his leg throbbed with a dull, healing sort of ache.

Feeling a little more at ease, Draco shook his head and smirked, his expression and tone dripping with condescension. “Granger doesn’t need me provoking anyone into disliking her, Weasley; she’s perfectly capable of doing that on her own. But I thank you for the vote of confidence. That you think I have such an influence with the student body means everything to me.”

She frowned, uncertainty flitting across her face, and Draco took advantage of her confusion to turn down the corridor, away from the Room of Hidden Things and her too-observant eyes.

But her footsteps echoed on the stone floor as she followed him. Then there was a quick patter as she caught up and matched his pace.

“Maybe you’re not behind Hermione’s current reputation around the castle,” she said, clearly unconvinced, “but I still say you’re up to something. You need to stay away from Hermione.”

“I’ll have you know, I keep my distance from her. She’s the one who can’t stay away from me,” he replied, irritated by her persistence. “Yes, I’ve been following her, but it’s kind of fun watching someone you hate having mental breakdowns all around the castle and struggle so hard to fit in where no one wants her filthy—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his thought because a wand was suddenly pointed in his face, and he was met with an angry Weasley, which was the most annoying kind of Weasley to be faced with.

“Finish that sentence and I will hex you and stuff you in a closet to rot. Just try me, Malfoy,” she said, her jaw clenched shut and her teeth bared. There was something unhinged in her eyes that would have convinced him she was telling the truth even if he hadn’t been on this end of her wand plenty of times already.

And still the need to provoke her was too strong to ignore. “Would you really? If I remember correctly, you were the poorest Defense Against the Dark Arts student in your year last term. You refused to lift your wand against anyone and got plenty of detentions for your lack of nerve.”

Her hand trembled, and the tip of her wand sparked. “I don’t hex innocents, and you fucking know that. You have no room to talk anyway because you were too _cowardly_ to hex anyone properly, in school or otherwise. Leave Hermione alone. If you lay another hand on her, I’ll make sure you reunite with your father in Azkaban. Personally if I have to.”

As she spun on her heel, her short-cropped hair swung around with her, but with less effect than it would have had a few months ago when it had been waist-length and wavy.

“What if she wants to put her hands on me?” Draco called after her, but his voice quavered and she ignored him.

She disappeared around a corner, and he was left alone, his body now shaking, too. He wasn’t sure what emotion was causing it. Anger at her parting jab? Fear at her threat? He just didn’t know. He kept all those messy emotions locked up in the back of his head where he didn’t have to deal with them, and now he struggled to recognize them. But for some reason, when he was with Granger, the emotions were clear and powerful—exacerbated, even—and that should have been reason enough to avoid her, to keep his distance from emotions he didn’t want to feel.

Instead, arguing with her, shoving her up against a wall and snarling in her face—being around Granger made him feel less like a ghost haunting the halls of Hogwarts looking for something to feel. The right thing to feel. He’d tried picking fights with people, before he’d realized his participation was unnecessary to start a brawl. The hexes, the punches, the blood gushing from wounds; none of that made him feel like he existed. With Granger, all of his emotions burned him, but at least he felt human.

Tremors continued to wrack his body as he abandoned his mission for the day. He thought the trembling was caused by his emotions trying to escape, but instead of facing them, he ignored them.

o  
+  
o

Draco returned to the Slytherin common room in case Weasley or another Gryffindor caught him near the Room of Hidden Things again. He felt a little dizzy from standing on his leg, but the throbbing had dulled even more by the time he reached the dungeons. Still, the pain over the last several days had worn him out, even though he hadn’t noticed his weariness until now.

Unfortunately, a quick escape to the seventh and eighth year boys’ dormitory (not many Slytherin boys had returned to Hogwarts that year, which meant there was plenty of room for the new sevenths and the old sevenths in one dorm) was made impossible by Pansy sitting near the fire, waiting for his return.

"You spend so much time with Gryffindors these days, I'm starting to think you've become one of them," she said before he'd spotted her.

Draco stiffened, wondering what she knew and how she'd heard about the encounter with Weasley so soon after it happened.

Pansy stood up, a smirk lighting her pug face with glee Draco didn't know how to feel anymore.

"I never see you, Draco," she continued with a purr as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "Have you switched Houses yet?"

Pulling her arms away from him, Draco snarled, "What are you talking about?" He sidestepped her, trying to put distance between them. He just wanted to be alone. He couldn't get a bloody moment to himself in this damn castle!

"The way you follow Granger around like a lost little puppy. Do you think the Head Girl can protect you from all those mean Hufflepuff firsties out for your blood?" Pansy cackled at her own words while Draco grit his teeth.

That wasn't why he haunted Granger. He knew all too well that she wouldn't do a damn thing to protect him if he was attacked—but it seemed she didn't have any qualms patching him up afterwards if it would make her feel less guilty about it. Maybe that alone was a reason to stick to her like a Permanent Sticking Charm. Having a personal Healer could be convenient for him since utilizing the services of the Hospital Wing was out of the question.

He decided to ignore Pansy's implication as an outright denial would be tantamount to a confession. "Your rumors have been detrimental to Granger's reputation so far. Are you inciting students to attack me, too?" he asked.

She waved her hand in a dismissal. "You know how mob mentality works. You work up a crowd to hate one person, they end up looking for other people to hang with them. If you've received some of the backlash, I apologize."

"So sincere," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

His sardonic tone made her snap, and the flirtatiousness she’d used as a facade fell away. "What do you want me to say, Draco? That you don't deserve the treatment you're receiving? If you hadn't royally fucked things up, we'd be on top of the world right now. Instead, thanks to you and your family, we're garbage in their eyes! Our money, our influence, our futures—gone! _You_ did this to us, and you have to deal with the consequences."

Was he supposed to feel hurt by her words? He felt nothing but numb. He'd already come to terms with the fact that he was disliked—hated, even—around the castle. Even the administration tolerated him solely on the Ministry's orders. Contact with his mother, the only person still on his side, was forbidden and impossible unless he found the Vanishing Cabinet undamaged and in working order. The fact that the other Slytherins shunned him, too, meant very little to him because he wanted nothing to do with them, either.

He didn't respond to Pansy, and she'd already dismissed him anyway, so he finally made his way to the boys' dormitory, to peace and quiet and at least one moment where he could be blessedly alone.

Luckily, the dormitory was empty. He pulled the curtains closed around his four-poster bed before climbing into it and installing a Silencing Charm for good measure. Maybe his classmates would think he’d gone to sleep and leave him be. He could hope.

He lit the tip of his wand and pulled his robes up, uncovering his leg. Under the flickering light of _Lumos_ , he began to unravel the bandages, slowly because he dreaded the sight of the scar and because the blood soaked wrappings already made his stomach riot against the lunch he’d eaten hours ago. As soon as his leg was free, he Vanished the bandages, and his stomach settled a little as a result.

The scar was still there, but that shouldn’t have surprised him considering how quickly and how long the wound had festered. But it already had the pink color of new skin, and it matched the scar on his chest from the curse Potter had used against him in their sixth year as well as the color of the Dark Mark on his arm. He ran his fingers gently down the jagged scar, tracing the line and remembering the pain. That’s all the pain was now: a memory. His leg still itched and he scratched it idly, but the soreness was gone.

He threw his robes back into place and stretched out in his bed, gazing unseeingly at the canopy. His thoughts swirled around his head, too quickly for him to focus on any one, but somehow they all came back to Granger.

Without Potter and Weasley around to back her up, Granger had devolved into a timid, nervous wreck, a state only exacerbated by the rumors Pansy had spread around the school for laughs. It had all started with a fourth year girl, who had—allegedly—been scolded by Granger for crying in a bathroom after hours, and the girl’s sixth-year brother, who had scolded Granger in turn for her tactlessness. Other such occurrences had taken place around the castle since then, but, thanks to Pansy, there were more stories of Granger’s lack of sensitivity than there were actual instances of it.

The Ravenclaw boy from whom Granger had taken House points for wearing his dead mother’s brooch, which was against the uniform policy? One of Pansy’s rumors. Pansy had strategically and loudly mentioned the story in a busy corridor, and the story had taken off. It didn’t matter that a Slytherin had been the first to utter it. By the time the tenth person had heard the rumor, the source had been of little consequence. Pansy kept the rumor mill churning, which meant that the stories all tended to blend together, so if Granger or her friends ever heard the rumors, they tended to sound a little bit like a true incident, and no one ever suspected the lies that they were.

Draco had got a laugh out of the rumors at first, but after following Granger around for a while, he saw what they had actually done to her. She'd become a ticking time bomb, full of doubt and fear and uncertainty until she was pushed to her limit. When she exploded, she became cruel, as he'd experienced himself so many nights ago. He didn’t actually _care_ if her feelings had been hurt by the rumors or the way people treated her. No, of course not. But there was no joy in insulting someone who felt they deserved to be insulted. She had just enough fight left in her when he was around, and, frankly, it reminded him too much of himself. It was only when he was around her that he felt real, that he felt… anything. He didn’t know why it was her. Maybe because she'd been tortured by his demented aunt in his home in front of his eyes. Maybe because her screams haunted his dreams. Maybe because she was hated and an outsider like himself, and having anyone around, even _her_ , was better than being completely alone.

Which was ironic because he’d been looking for solitude since he’d returned to Hogwarts. But whenever he was near Granger…. He didn’t know. He felt. He existed. Even if her primary emotion towards him was hatred, she still treated him the same as she always had, and that, in its own way, was a comfort.

Draco shook his head, trying to shake Granger out. For someone he hated, he sure spent a lot of unnecessary time thinking about her. He had other things to worry about, like finding a way to contact his mother. He sat up and pulled his robes up over his head, discarding them at the foot of the bed. He burrowed underneath the duvet and closed his eyes, banishing the thoughts of Granger as he tried to draw back the dream he’d had earlier of his mother’s soothing touch and her voice.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would see, once and for all, what had survived the Fiendfyre in the Room of Hidden Things. If anything.

**TBC**


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooo I never intended to take seven months to update.... I'm really sorry for the wait. Here's a new chapter, though! :D I can't guarantee there will be another new chapter soon, but I'm fairly confident it won't take me seven months to update again. Fingers crossed, anyway. Reviews appreciated!

Hermione spotted Malfoy fighting the bustling crowd that was converging down the Great Staircase, undoubtedly heading to lunch. She hadn’t seen him outside of class since the afternoon she’d treated his leg in the Room of Requirement. That had been three days before, and while she did breathe a little easier when Malfoy wasn’t following her around, it also made her uneasy. She’d been anxious to see how his wound had healed.

“I’ll see you after lunch,” she said to Ginny before diving into the crowd herself. She came up on Malfoy’s side, and he glanced at her, his lips falling into an even more severe scowl than he’d been wearing previously.

If anyone noticed the strange combination walking together, away from the direction of the Great Hall, they didn’t point it out. Perhaps the students were at their most unobservant when hungry. Or maybe their indifference to Hermione and Malfoy made the two outcasts invisible.

When an opportunity arrived, Hermione pushed him into an unoccupied classroom and ignored his indignant exclamation as he fell against a work table.

“What the hell, Granger?”

She locked the door with her wand before facing him, but she wasn’t sure what to say. Her motivation for trapping him like this was clear to her, but no practical part of her brain had told her to act. She’d instinctively gravitated toward him as soon as she’d laid eyes on him, and they had to be alone to have this conversation. Hence the classroom.

“I wanted to see how your leg was healing,” she said with an imperious tilt of her chin.

“It’s fine,” he replied as he approached the door, but when he tried the doorknob, it didn’t budge. “Let me out,” he said to the wood, his voice hard.

“Just let me see it,”

_“No.”_

Hermione advanced on him, and he spun around, pinning his back to the door. “Why not? It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Because I have dignity! And because it’s none of your business!”

“If I made it worse, it is my business!”

“If you’d made it worse, believe me, you would have heard about it before now.”

Hermione’s nose rose a little higher in the air, but the top of her head barely reached Malfoy’s chin and the effect of her display of dominance was lost due to their height difference.

“Show me your damn leg, Malfoy,” she said through clenched teeth.

His lips lifted into a smirk that aggravated Hermione all the more. “Make me,” he said with a challenge.

She breathed in deep through her nose and took another step closer until the front of her robes brushed his.

He watched her with wary attention but didn’t move as she invaded his space. She held his gaze, and he didn’t seem to notice when she gently grasped his arm above his elbow and trailed her fingers up and down. The sleeve of his robe prevented their skin from making contact, but she felt the infinitesimal tremor that wracked his body; she saw the way his Adam’s apple bobbed.

His reaction and their proximity, even if she’d been the one to instigate it, made her whole body run hot. She was sure he could see the bloom of heat in her face. Maybe he could even hear her racing heart.

While he was distracted, she reached into his robe pocket with a free hand and pulled out his wand, and then she stepped away from him, breaking the connection between them.

“I can’t make you show me,” she said, raising his wand tauntingly. “But I can keep this until you do.”

Normally she wouldn’t dare to do something so unnecessary and risky; at least, not _now_ , not when her position as Head Girl felt tenuous at best. But she knew how he felt about being parted from his wand. He would give her what she wanted. The move wasn’t a risk at all—it was a sure thing, and the rush she felt being able to bend him to her will made her flush anew.

For a moment, his eyebrows rose in surprise, but only for a moment. They fell, just as quickly as they’d risen, into an ugly glower.

“Give it back,” he demanded.

Hermione stepped further into the classroom, away from him. “Show me your leg.”

She should have known better than to taunt him this way. She’d seen him cornered before, and she knew what he was capable of when angered, but the memory of the back of her head inadvertently meeting stone as he shook her was long gone from her mind. When Hermione was around Malfoy, she felt reckless, hateful, and, as a result, powerful. She was a poltergeist wreaking havoc on the students of Hogwarts, taking special delight in terrorizing Draco Malfoy. But she knew that as soon as she and Malfoy were apart, the spell would break, and she would regret her actions, just like she’d regretted leaving him to Dennis and his mob. Right now, however, with his eyes boring into hers, burning with hatred, she felt more alive than she’d felt since the start of term.

She realized suddenly that he’d always had that effect on her, since their return to Hogwarts. That was why Malfoy’s stalking hadn’t frightened her like it should. When Malfoy was near her, she felt like her old self, before the war, and she felt like she existed, like she was no longer invisible.

Hermione lifted her chin as he approached her, her feet rooted to the spot, refusing to bow to his feeble intimidation tactics. Their gazes locked, challenging each other to a battle of wills, and just when she expected him to snatch the wand from her, he fell onto the bench next to him, his expression still forbidding and unforgiving.

The fabric of his robes inched up to reveal his left leg, now unbandaged. He leaned back against the work table behind him, his arms crossed over his chest and his stare hard as she threw his wand down on the table and kneeled before him.

Her fingers traced the slightly puckered pink line where it curved around his knee, prompting the translucent hair on his leg to stand at attention. The wound had scarred, but she hadn’t expected anything less considering the inflammation and infection she’d treated. Still, she’d expected the cut to look as awful as it had when she’d first seen it.

“It doesn’t hurt?” she asked, glancing up for a moment before returning her attention to her examination.

“No,” Malfoy replied in a clipped tone.

“And?” she prompted. “No discomfort? No difficulty walking?”

“No.” His lips pressed together in a tight, displeased line.

With a huff, Hermione stood up, annoyed at his reticence. “Why wouldn’t you want me to see this?”

His shrug irked her further, but his refusal to acknowledge her pushed her buttons the same way he’d pushed them weeks ago in the middle of a mob in the dungeons. She slapped his shoulder and he grunted in surprise, but she achieved the result she’d been hoping for when he looked at her.

“Why do you have to be so difficult? Just answer my question, and I’ll leave you alone.”

She jumped when he suddenly began to laugh, his crossed arms lowering to clutch his stomach as he doubled over with breathless guffaws.

When he met her eyes again, there was a genuinely amused glint in his she had never seen before. “Granger, at this point I think it’s impossible for you to leave me alone.”

Her lips tightened, her brow furrowing in displeasure. “ _You_ are the one who follows me around, remember?”

“Well, if you weren’t so bloody entertaining, I wouldn’t have anything to do with you,” he replied, gently wiping the corner of his eyes with a finger. “The truth is—”

Hermione made a sound of disbelief.

“—I didn’t want you to see my leg because I didn’t want you to feel too proud of yourself. The last thing I need is to be the reason you get an ego boost. I like you best when you’re moping around the castle trying to figure out how to fit in with all the other children.”

Before she could reply to that, he shrugged and continued. “You want to know another truth? You don’t need to fit in with them. _Fuck_ them. What have they ever done for you? They don’t know what you’ve been through. They don’t know the difficult choices you’ve had to make. So fuck ‘em.”

He stood up suddenly, forcing Hermione backwards even more, his face frozen in a stricken expression. “And fuck me, too,” he said with a growl before he swept out of the room.

Just like that. Gone before Hermione could even process what had happened. She stood still for a moment, her mind racing, and then her lips cracked her face open, spreading into a wide grin that she couldn’t control.

Hermione had only half-known what she was doing, and she hadn’t mangled his leg. The infection had cleared, the wound had closed, and the limp had disappeared. She _was_ capable of helping people, when she knew where to begin, when the solution could be found in a book.

She wasn’t a failure, and, most importantly, she didn’t need Harry and Ron in order to do some good. She’d always felt that their friendship, the three of them together, had balanced each other out. Hermione was the objective one, the one who didn’t let emotion affect her decisions.. Ron was practical. Level-headed. He could think on his feet in a way that Hermione couldn’t. Harry was the heart of their friendship, the one who felt so strongly about everything, who couldn’t leave anyone behind. Ron and Harry rounded Hermione out, filling her in where she was lacking.

She loved Ginny, Neville, and Luna, but what they had experienced, they’d gone through together, and Hermione didn’t know how she fit in their relationship. But Harry and Ron knew Hermione like no one else did, and she would have seen that she was important and capable weeks ago if they had been at Hogwarts with her. She could just hear Harry telling her not to listen to what everyone said about her, and Ron would have tracked down the rumor-starters and done whatever he could to make the rumors stop.

Why had it taken her this long to realize what she had always known? Why did she need anyone’s validation?

She didn’t. And that was what Malfoy had shown her—in fact, that was exactly why he _hadn’t_ wanted to show her his leg. He’d known (how did he know so much about her?) that seeing her job well done would have improved her confidence. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that she wasn’t a failure; the proof was right there before her. In the pink scar on Malfoy’s leg. In the fact that she’d survived the war. In the fact that she was standing in an empty classroom at Hogwarts agonizing over her ability to heal peoples’ physical and emotional wounds.

If that was her most dire concern, she really didn’t have it so bad. People had _died_ during the war. Some of her classmates lost parents and siblings, and while Hermione’s parents didn’t remember her, at least they were still alive.

Her spirits lifted, she poked her head out of the classroom. Except for a group of sixth years huddled together against the wall, the corridor stood empty.

As Hermione headed in the direction of the Grand Staircase, she heard one of the sixth years, a girl with dark hair that hung in ringlets, whisper, “Didn’t Malfoy come out of that room?”

A boy with spiky hair muttered in response, “Do you think what they’re saying is true?”

But Hermione’s mood was so much improved, she didn’t even stop to wonder at their words.

o  
+  
o

Hermione made it to lunch just in time to grab a sandwich, but she was so distracted, she didn’t see Neville, Luna, and Ginny huddled together at the end of the Gryffindor table until after she’d sat down in the middle. When she saw them, all three of her friends looked up at her, creases in their brows for different expressions: concern, suspicion, surprise. She was just about to stand up to join them when the bell signaling the end of lunch rang. Ginny folded up a piece of parchment and rushed out of the Great Hall without saying a word to Hermione, but Neville and Luna approached her as she tucked her sandwich in a napkin and threw an apple in her bag for later.

“What’s wrong with Ginny?” she asked.

Neville and Luna shared a look, and Hermione’s heart beat hard against her chest. Had something happened?

“Ginny asked Harry for his dad’s map,” Neville replied slowly, “to keep an eye on Malfoy.”

“It arrived during lunch,” Luna added, the corners of her lips lifting up into a slight smile for a moment before falling again.

Hermione’s blood instantly ran cold. If they’d been looking at the Marauder’s Map together, they would have seen Malfoy alone in a classroom with Hermione. But that didn’t mean anything, right? She wasn’t sure why Ginny knowing this made her uneasy.

“Where did she go?” she asked as they followed two gossipy Ravenclaw boys out of the Great Hall.

“I think she said she was going to do some homework in the library,” said Neville. “I’ll see you later. I’ve got some work to do in the greenhouses.” He gave Luna’s arm a slight squeeze before he turned to exit the castle, leaving Hermione and Luna to follow the Ravenclaws up the Grand Staircase.

“Do you want to work on our Potions essay together?” asked Luna, but Hermione’s mind was buzzing.

She hadn’t properly analyzed her meeting with Malfoy or his abrupt departure, and now she had Ginny to worry about, too. If she could just get a moment alone to think, maybe she could figure out what was bothering her about Ginny and the map.

“No, I’m sorry, Luna. I need to talk to Ginny. Maybe after dinner?”

“All right!” she said with a bright sparkle in her bulbous eyes. “After dinner, then!”

With Luna taken care of, Hermione raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time until her legs ached in exhaustion, and then she flew down the first-floor corridor to the library’s doors. She took three heaving breaths to settle her racing heart before entering, and then made her way (much more calmly) to the section of the library that housed Potions resources.

Ginny was there, of course, pulling books off a shelf. Like Hermione and Luna, she had a Potions essay to write as well.

“You can’t do this, Ginny! You can’t take after Harry and spy on Malfoy all day and all night. He isn’t up to anything!” Hermione said, pleased that she hadn’t sounded winded.

“What are you talking about?” Ginny asked without looking away from the book she was inspecting.

“Haven’t you taken up a crusade against Malfoy?”

“Of course not,” Ginny answered. “I asked for the map to keep an eye on _you_.”

Hermione blinked. “Me?”

Ginny tucked the book under her arm and gave her full attention to her friend. “All these attacks against you? And the rumors are only getting worse. Things aren’t getting better, Hermione. I’m concerned about your safety.”

As Hermione absorbed this turn in the conversation, she crossed her arms. “So you’re spying on me.”

“No, of course not,” Ginny said. She seemed to see the concern in Hermione’s eyes because she discarded her stack of books onto the nearest table and then drew her friend in close with a comforting hand on her arm.

Somehow, Hermione wasn’t comforted.

“I’m concerned. If something happened to you, it makes me feel better that we’ll be able to find you. That’s all. I asked Harry for the map as a precaution. I’m not going to use it to invade your privacy. Or Malfoy’s, though I don’t know why you care so much about that.”

Hermione shrugged and took a step back, letting Ginny’s hand fall. “I don’t! His situation here is precarious. It wouldn’t be fair to put undue suspicion on him when he hasn’t done anything—”

“So beating your head against a wall, that’s not doing anything?” Ginny asked, her tone hard.

“He served his detention. He paid for the crime,” Hermione argued.

“Following you around, then. You don’t find anything suspicious about that?”

“He’s just doing it to get under my skin! He hasn’t done anything to me that I haven’t deserved!”

Ginny pulled away, her eyes calculating as she inspected Hermione, whose face grew hotter the longer Ginny stared.

“I provoked his attack,” she admitted. “He wouldn’t have put his hands on me if I hadn’t said such awful things to him.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because he hasn’t touched me since!”

Hermione didn’t know why she was so desperate about this matter. She just knew that she didn’t want Ginny to know how much time she spent around Malfoy. It was more than Malfoy stalking her—in a way, Hermione depended on his following her. It drove her up the wall, but he was a human constant in her day to day life that she sorely needed. He was normal. Only, now, all of his insults and anger were directed at Hermione specifically for lack of Harry. Even so, he made her feel like the world hadn’t ended for one night at the beginning of May. He made her feel like nothing had changed.

“Well,” Ginny said, clearly unconvinced by Hermione’s argument, “if you ever get yourself into trouble, we’ll be able to find you. All I care about is that you’re safe. Maybe you trust Malfoy not to hurt you again, but I don’t, and there are other students who’d like to see you in pain. Have you heard the newest rumors?”

Hermione closed her eyes, suddenly weary, too weary to have this conversation. “No. And I don’t want to know about them. They can’t hurt me if I don’t hear them.”

“Fine,” Ginny said, her tone displeased. “I’m sure you’ll hear what people are saying soon enough. If you don’t, Malfoy surely will. Just.... be careful, okay? There are some sick people out there that want to see you hurt.”

“They’re suffering,” Hermione said with a sigh. “If I knew how to help them, maybe they wouldn’t hate me so.”

Ginny seemed to want to argue because it took her a moment to compose a response. “Maybe. But we all went through the same war. We have to find our own ways of finding peace.”

Hermione agreed, but reality just didn’t work that way. The students were grieving and they didn’t know how to stop the pain, so they lashed out at the easiest target, at the person who reminded them the most of their demonic administration the previous year. She understood why she was hated. She just wanted to help them.

“I promise I won’t abuse my power. Now, I really need to work on this Potions essay,” Ginny said in a clear dismissal.

“Fine,” Hermione said.

As she left the library, she couldn’t help but think that Ginny had only told her what she’d wanted to hear.

**TBC**


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere, on one of the archives I post this story to, I said that seven months definitely would not pass again before my next update. I was so so so wrong. It's been twice that long now, a year and three months. I don't know where the time went!! But here's a new chapter, and I'll make no promises about the next one, but since I'll be recycling some content from the version of this story that was posted for Interhouse Fest, my _hope_ is that it will not take me a year to update again. :P
> 
> If anyone is still bothering to follow this story, thank you for your patience. To any potential newcomers... I'm sorry about my random updates. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Draco stared up at the canopy of his bed, his arms crossed over his chest with his right hand mindlessly caressing his left forearm. On the other side of the room, Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini slept soundly, their soft snores the white noise that kept him awake instead of lulling him to sleep. Crabbe and Goyle’s beds, to the left and right of his, sat empty, the mattresses stripped of their sheets and the duvets packed away in trunks at the foot of the beds.

During the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco had witnessed a vicious, fiery beast consume Crabbe in the very room in which Hermione Granger had healed his leg. Goyle hadn’t taken the Ministry’s offer to return to Hogwarts like Draco had—like his mother had forced him to. For several counts of Unforgivable curses cast on students during the Carrows’ reign at Hogwarts, Goyle had received several years of arrest. Whether he was serving time in Azkaban with both of their fathers or in his home, Draco had no idea.

He’d never really cared for Crabbe or Goyle. They’d been his brawn, pawns he could easily boss around as he pleased, but Hogwarts was certainly different without them, and it was true that had it not been for Potter and his idiot friends, Draco would have lost his life along with Crabbe’s.

That fact did not sit well with him at all. He’d found out at his mother’s trial that she had lied to the Dark Lord to save Potter, and it was hard for him to reconcile how his mother could have secured a victory in the Dark Lord’s favor. Instead, she’d abandoned the cause for her family.

What kind of person did that make Draco? Did he owe Potter his life for no reason at all? If Draco hadn’t gone after Potter in the Room of Hidden Things, would the result of the war have been the same? Would Crabbe still be alive?

He rolled over onto this stomach to stop that line of thought. Bad enough Potter—once again, always and forever—managed to become the great savior the world always said he was. Bad enough that Draco had been labeled the villain of this story and that the glory he had tried to obtain had been given to Harry bleeding Potter instead. Better to just stop thinking about it entirely before he did something reckless.

Like climb out of bed and go in search of a fight.

Instead, Draco recalled Granger kneeling on the floor in front of him, his robe lifted to reveal his leg. Instead, he remembered the feel of her gentle, cold fingers on his knee as she traced the line of his scar. That was a dangerous thought, too, and despite himself, his body reacted to it in such a way that Draco had to suppress his groan.

He was deprived of affection. That’s why his dick was suddenly hard. It had nothing to do with Granger herself, just her gentleness and concern. If he kept thinking it, over and over again, maybe that would make it true. Any other alternative was unacceptable, so he didn’t allow himself to contemplate _why_ his body had suddenly betrayed him.

Soon he would go to the Room of Hidden Things and he would search for the Vanishing Cabinet that created a passageway to its twin at Borgin and Burkes. He would go home, see his mother, let her hug him and stroke his hair, and he would forget all about Granger and her soothing fingers.

o  
+  
o

Previous attempts to sneak back into the Room of Hidden Things hadn’t panned out due to Ginny Weasley’s uncanny knack for running into Draco in the seventh floor corridor. As he’d done during his sixth year at Hogwarts, he would have skipped one of the classes he shared with Weasley to visit the room, but under the rules of his probation, unauthorized absences from any class would get him kicked out of Hogwarts and into a cell at Azkaban.

He couldn’t have that.

Fortunately, Weasley’s schedule and Draco’s schedule were similar enough for him to know that she was in class during his study break, so he made use of her preoccupation to slink up to the seventh floor, trying his best not to look too conspicuous or devious. Some of the students he passed glanced at him, glared, but mostly he went ignored.

He never wanted Granger to know, but Draco understood the despair she felt at being invisible. Growing up, Draco had always been the center of his parents’ world. His father had spoonfed him self-esteem every time he talked about the history of the Malfoy family and the importance of their family name. Draco had grown up believing he was special, and he’d attended Hogwarts demanding to be treated as such.

There was nothing Draco had loved more than being the center of attention, being doted on and catered to. At least, that was how he had felt before the war. He wasn’t sure he had the constitution for entertaining anymore, but that didn’t mean he didn’t miss the adoration of his classmates. Now, even the Slytherins despised him, and Draco couldn’t blame them. His father had sold out as many Death Eaters as he could to receive the most lenient sentence possible. He’d screwed over friends and allies of the Malfoy family—and their children, the ones who had returned to Hogwarts, did not forgive the betrayal.

Alone, Draco was vulnerable to attack and ridicule. He welcomed the attacks, but the ridicule and indifference had angered him. He deserved more.

For the first time all term, Draco welcomed the indifference. Students looked past him as he walked by, allowing him to ascend to the seventh floor uninterrupted. Still, his wand remained within easy reach, just in case someone had the bright idea to confront him or attack him from the shadows.

Strange. He had never sought to fight back before. He couldn’t retaliate against any attackers unless he wanted to go to prison, which, of course, he didn’t.

He stowed his wand inside a deeper pocket of his robes, where it would not be as easily accessible. He couldn’t fight back. He didn’t want to. And his wand was defective now, for some reason, so he doubted it would do his bidding even if he had any desire to defend himself in a fight.

Draco hurried down the seventh floor corridor to the tapestry featuring Barnabus the Barmy and his school of pirouetting trolls, his heart racing faster with each step. Finally, after days of thwarted attempts, his curiosity would finally be assuaged.

He managed to pace in front of the tapestry twice before he was interrupted. He grit his teeth to keep from snapping at Professor McGonagall, who stopped in the middle of the corridor with her arms crossed.

“Mr. Malfoy. You should be in class.”

Breathing deeply, he used Occlumency to compartmentalize his frustration, stuffing it to the back of his mind before his emotions caused him to make a grave mistake.

In as polite a tone as he could manage, he said, “I have a break this period, Professor.”

McGonagall’s eyebrow arched. “As a NEWT-level student, I would expect you to utilize your free time to your best advantage. What, may I ask, are you doing up here?”

Draco’s mind raced, and, without thinking, he spat out the first lie he could think of.

“I’m simply waiting for Granger. She asked me to meet her here.”

McGonagall’s pointed stare prompted him to continue.

“I asked her to show me the wand movement for the nonverbal cross-species transfigurations we studied in class this morning. We were planning to practice together.”

“And would Miss Granger be able to verify that?”

A flash of irritation slipped through his Occlumantic shield, and Draco couldn’t be sure his derision didn’t appear on his face for that single moment. All term long, the Headmistress had made it quite clear that she did not want Draco at Hogwarts and did not think he deserved to be there. If the Ministry hadn’t mandated his parole be served at school, she would not have allowed him back, he was sure of it.

Maybe another person would have been grateful for the Ministry’s interference in this situation, but Draco had simply substituted a cell in Azkaban for Hogwarts. The castle was still a prison, albeit a much larger one, physically and emotionally. The loathing he faced on a daily basis had isolated him, and receiving the same treatment from McGonagall, from the Headmistress, the person whose duty it was to serve and care for every student inside and underneath Hogwarts’s towers, made Draco want to do something stupid.

Something more stupid than picking fights with classmates and sneaking out of the castle.

Something McGonagall would find distasteful, but something Draco couldn’t be punished for.

“Yes,” he hissed through a clenched jaw. “She would.”

McGonagall looked over Draco’s shoulder and dropped her arms. “How fortunate. Here she comes now.”

Draco tensed as Granger picked up her pace when she saw him and the Headmistress together, her brow creasing in concern.

“Professor? Is something wrong?”

“That is what I am trying to determine. Can you tell me what Mr. Malfoy is doing in this part of the castle?”

For a moment, Granger’s eyes widened in bewilderment, and a combination of anger and dread pulsed inside Draco, seizing around his lungs. He’d get caught in his lie and McGonagall would report him to the Ministry, and then he’d be sent to Azkaban. He’d sit in a cell next to his father, and he wouldn’t see his mother for the next several years, breaking her heart….

Granger gasped loudly. “Oh my goodness. We were supposed to go over those notes, weren’t we? I’m so sorry, Malfoy, I completely forgot. I lost track of time in the library.”

Draco tried not to stare too hard or look too shocked. Granger had _no_ reason to lie for him. No reason to protect him from the iron shackles of the law.

She grabbed Draco’s arm and nodded at McGonagall, a gesture of outright dismissal if Draco ever saw one.

“Professor, if you will excuse us. There isn’t much time left in our break, and we’re going to need every second of it.”

He couldn’t stop a smirk from lighting up his face as Granger dragged him down the corridor, leaving a scowling headmistress behind. They turned a corner and Draco was jerked into a classroom, the door slamming shut behind them.

She spun around, every muscle in her face tight with displeasure, her hands clenched and shaking at her sides.

“Why did I just lie to the headmistress, Malfoy?”

He shrugged, all amused nonchalance. “Beats me, but if I didn’t know any better, I’d assume you were a Legilimens. Beautiful work. That was exactly what I’d told her.”

She stalked forward, her chest heaving until suddenly she dropped to the floor, crouching with her head in her hands.

“What have I done? What am I doing? I should have let her handle this.”

“Once again, you’re getting too worked up, and over what? A white lie?”

Her head lifted, and she slowly stood back up, tears sparkling in her eyes but a determination in the wrinkles on her forehead that spoke of a refusal to let those tears fall.

“Why did you lie, then? What are you trying to hide? You owe it to me tell me.”

As incessant and rule-abidingly annoying as Granger was, there was something about her like this that he liked. Unwound, not unhinged. Tenacious, not persistent. Angry, not fearful. There was something about how her hair puffed up around her face in the heat of her emotion, how her eyes sparkled with resolve, how she violated her values and hated herself for doing so.

Like this, she was Hermione Granger, and yet she wasn’t Hermione Granger anymore. She was someone else. Someone who had to adapt to survive and hated both processes of adaptation and survival. But she did it anyway because her will to live was stronger than her desire to adhere to regulations and proper conduct.

How ambitious of her. How Slytherin.

So he told her the truth. Part of it anyway. Because she’d earned the truth by shedding another dull skin. One day she would be the most vibrant woman in the room, ready to burn down the world to get what she wanted in the name of the righteous. Because he didn’t think she would ever shed her righteousness.

“I just wanted to get inside the Room of Hidden Things. I haven’t been in there since it was destroyed by Crabbe’s Fiendfyre.”

“Why?”

“To see… what’s left.”

The wrinkles in her brow smoothed out some, and she took a single step back. Maybe she would think he was looking for Crabbe’s remains. That was fine with him as long as he got inside that room.

“Okay, let’s go.” Before he could question her for inviting herself to his mission, she poked a finger into his chest, stabbing her point home. “Don’t for one second argue with me about going in there with you. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you owe this to me. And I will figure out what you’re really planning.”

He snatched her hand in his and pulled her closer until they were practically nose to nose. He felt her small gasp against his cheek when she stumbled against him, deliciously warm and surprised.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t owe you anything. I didn’t ask you to lie for me, you chose to do that on your own. If you think you’re going to hold that over my head, you’re dead wrong.”

She tripped over her feet when he let go of her with a slight shove, but he was out the door, giving her no time to formulate a response. Instead, she was forced to follow him. He could feel her eyes boring into his back as he led her around the corner and down the corridor, her suspicion and dislike radiating off her in palpable waves. He smiled to himself as he paced in front of the tapestry, and this time he was not interrupted.

On the wall opposite the tapestry, a simple door appeared with a brass doorknob. The edges of the door were singed black, and blast residue from spells that had collided with the wood had left marks behind.

He hesitated for just a moment before he remembered those observant brown eyes watching him, and then he reached for the doorknob, almost expecting it to burn his hand. Instead, it was cool to the touch, and it turned easily, the door swinging inward to admit them to a room of pitch.

At first, he thought the description just a metaphor for the darkness that met them, but when Draco stepped inside, candles flared to life from hanging chandeliers, revealing the molten wreckage the Fiendfyre had left behind.

Granger came up beside him and looked around, her nose wrinkling not just at the sight before them, but at the acrid smell that still lingered in the room. Hot steam wafted up in poisonous spirals, glowing with a dull purple light.

A path clear of the putrid waste ascended from the door to the back of the room, showing exactly where the Fiendfyre had chased them, but the damage extended to each of the four corners. The last time Draco had stepped foot inside this version of the Room of Hidden Things, there had been shelves and mountains of objects, as far as the eye could see. Too many things to accurately catalog with the naked eye. Now, the walls were visible, making the room appear much smaller than Draco remembered it being. Everything that had been hidden here had been demolished, burned to ash. Now it all lay smoldering under hot tar.

Draco needed only a quick glance to know that the Vanishing Cabinet was gone, and with it so was his chance to see his mother.

“Well?” Granger said, her voice soft in the silence.

Crabbe’s body—or what remained of it—was in this room, so thoroughly destroyed there was nothing left to look for. The Room of Hidden Things was now a graveyard, and Granger, surprisingly, had adjusted her tone in deference, the heat of her suspicion and dislike gone.

“It’s—it’s not what I hoped to see,” he said, the hollowness of his voice causing him to clear his throat. He looked at her. “But it’s what I expected.”

She looked back at him for a few moments, her eyes darting as if searching for something in his before she lowered her gaze and walked further into the room, following the cleared trail of the Fiendfyre.

This time, Draco followed her, his eyes scanning the wreckage for anything, anything that he could possibly use, any hope that something had survived Crabbe’s impulsive last act.

He wondered how the world would be different now if Potter had perished in this room, but he couldn’t picture it, and he realized for the first time since his sentencing that he didn’t want to. Draco could have stolen Crabbe’s glory and claimed the recognition of being the one to defeat Harry Potter himself, but would he have saved his family or destroyed it in doing so? If the Dark Lord had won, his family would still be living in fear serving him. Perhaps they would have been honored, but at what cost?

It felt traitorous to think such thoughts, but Draco’s nightmares of the Dark Lord’s red eyes continued to haunt him, months after his defeat. What kind of nightmares would Draco have had to endure if the Dark Lord had won?

Granger crouched next to a pile of pitch and observed the steam rolling off it. Draco pretended he wasn’t watching her as she conjured a vial and used her wand to collect a sample of the substance, but as soon as it touched the glass, the vial melted through her fingers.

She gasped and jumped up, dropping what was left of the vial before inspecting her fingers closely. A sigh of relief came out of her mouth before she turned and continued down the path.

Draco stared where the vial lay disintegrated on the ground, the sample she’d collected smoldering, and wondered if he could make use of it with a proper, fortified container. He’d have to consider it. For now, he continued to follow Granger as he searched for one object that had not been destroyed.

At some point, his attention turned to Granger, though he tried not to let on that he was now observing her.

The last time they’d been alone together, she had kneeled at his feet and run her hands over his knee and thigh, inspecting his wound and her work healing it. Just the thought of that encounter made Draco’s blood rush south, and he grit his teeth at his body’s sudden interest. There wasn’t anything pretty about her, nothing striking. She was as plain as unflavored oatmeal, bland and lumpy and unappetizing in every way.

But she bit her lip in thought as she scanned the room, stopping every now and then to analyze another pool of tar, another whorl of steam, and her teeth pressing against her fleshy lip brought color to her mouth, making it look fuller. The idea of kissing her was as repugnant as the smell that remained from the Fiendfyre’s destruction, but it had been so long since he’d received affection from anyone, so long since he’d sought it.

He and Pansy used to fool around before Draco became immersed in the war, but she couldn’t stomach him anymore and he could say the same for her.

The Vanishing Cabinet was gone. He wouldn’t be able to see his mother until June now, if he managed to stay out of trouble and out of Azkaban that long. Seven months without affirmation or physical touch—

He’d never wanted it this badly before, and now the thought of being physically, emotionally, and utterly alone strangled him.

He let himself admit that Granger had nice eyes. Big, round, curious, and doe-like when they weren’t narrowed at him with hate and distrust. Maybe he could kill three birds with one stone by annoying McGonagall and Weasley, corrupting Granger, and assuaging Draco’s need for some kind of intimacy if he just let himself—

He didn’t get the opportunity to complete his thought because the door to the corridor opened and a voice called out, “Hermione!”

Granger spun on her heel, shock crossing her face before transforming into outrage, which Draco found interesting.

McGonagall stood at the door, staring around the room in disapproval as Weasley ran down the path, her complexion even more pale than usual.

“Hermione,” she said again, her tone beseeching. “Ron—he—there was an attack or an accident—I don’t—”

Granger didn’t gasp, but she blanched, hesitating for just a moment before she grabbed Weasley’s hand and ran back to McGonagall without so much as a parting glance at Draco.

McGonagall glanced at him, though, her eyes narrowing at him in warning before she exited the Room of Hidden Things in Granger and Weasley’s wake and closed the door behind herself.

Draco was alone with the wreckage, with Crabbe’s ghost, with the Vanishing Cabinet’s palpable absence, with his interrupted thoughts about Granger and intimacy and isolation. He kicked a hardened hunk of pitch and watched it sail into a molten mound of it, sinking and steaming as it became swallowed by burning tar, the last remnants of the battle that had been waged on these grounds.

Inside himself, Draco fought a battle as well.

**TBC**


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably hold onto this chapter and wait until the next one is finished, too, but oh well. :)
> 
> Reviews appreciated!

Hermione focused on the folded piece of parchment in Ginny’s shaking hand as she followed her and Professor McGonagall to the headmistress’s office. Ginny had admitted to using the map to keep an eye on Hermione, and the evidence of her doing so was apparent. Her outrage almost eclipsed her concern about whatever had happened to Ron, though she tried to calm herself with logic.

Ron was in trouble. Professor McGonagall must have informed Ginny. Hermione, practically an extended member of the Weasley family, was nowhere to be found, so Ginny had used the Marauder’s Map to find her. That’s all there was to it. Ginny had had a defensible reason to consult the map and disturb Hermione’s privacy. Eventually, logic did finally win out, and her outrage evolved into anxiety.

The three women were silent as they trekked through the corridors. Once they were safely ensconced within Professor McGonagall’s office, the headmistress picked up a quill from her desk and turned an empathetic eye on Hermione. Clearly she had already filled Ginny in on what had happened.

“Ron has been injured, and Molly has requested both of your presences at St. Mungo’s. From what I understand, the recruits were ambushed during an outdoor training, but Molly should have all the details when you arrive.” She held out her hand, the quill sitting lightly on her palm, as if the slightest breath could make it blow away.

Ginny eagerly approached the quill, touching it with an anxious impatience. Hermione wanted to step back, run out of the room. She didn’t want to face what was at the end of that Portkey journey. She couldn’t let anything happen to Ron. Not _her_ Ron!

“Hermione?” Ginny said, a begging note in her voice and a plea in her eyes. Her body trembled minutely, her fingers twitched.

Silently, Hermione approached Professor McGonagall’s outstretched hand, and before she could give herself time to think herself out of it, she touched the quill. As soon as she did, her body jerked as if she’d been hooked behind the navel and pulled through time and space. The sensation lasted only moments, and Hermione was grateful when it ended.

“Ginny!” Mrs. Weasley called, racing to her daughter to pull her into a tight embrace. Then Hermione was pulled into the hug as well, Mrs. Weasley’s warm arms stilling her shuddering and crushing the quill between their bodies.

“How is he?” Ginny asked as they pulled away, voicing the question Hermione couldn’t bring herself to ask.

“Still unconscious. Come on, now. Let’s go see him.”

As they were shuffled out of the lobby, Hermione looked around for anything signifying which floor they were on, and the words “Spell Damage” made her heart jump into her throat.

“But what’s wrong with him?” Ginny was asking.

Mrs. Weasley looked harried, her hair wild and frizzy as if she hadn’t had time to comb it—or as if she’d run her hands through it too much. She stopped and faced Ginny and Hermione, forcing her lips up into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. If she was trying to be calming, it wasn’t working.

“We’ll tell you everything, but first… I just want to warn you. They’ve placed him in the Janus Thickey Ward—”

Both Hermione and Ginny gasped.

“—He’s stable, but his Healer isn’t sure what’s happened to him. Let’s just go see him now, and then we’ll explain.”

They continued down the corridor with more urgency until they approached the door Hermione remembered from her last visit to St. Mungo’s during the Christmas holidays of her fifth year. When they stepped inside the ward, Hermione had to blink hard at the sight before her.

Ron wasn’t even visible in his hospital bed nearest the door. Mr. Weasley, George, Percy, Bill, Fleur, and Harry were all standing on the side of the bed closest to the entrance, blocking Ron from sight, but that wasn’t the image that had Hermione stopping in her tracks. Gilderoy Lockhart sat in a chair on the other side of the bed, reading aloud from a book with his own smiling and winking face on the cover.

“Is he still at it, then?” Mrs. Weasley asked her husband as she sidled up to him. Lines of disapproval surrounded her mouth, which drooped down into a frown. The expression was mirrored on Mr. Weasley’s face.

“Yes,” he muttered, “but he doesn’t seem to need much feedback from his audience, so I think we can ignore him without offending.”

Hermione didn’t care about offending anyone, least of all the amnesic Gilderoy Lockhart. She and Ginny both pushed through the crowd around the bed, where Ron lay inert. He’d cropped his hair short for Auror training, shaved smooth on the sides and spiky on top. A bandage circled his forehead, and his right arm was in a sling. Besides those two injuries, he looked fine. His face was unlined in sleep. He didn’t seem to be in any pain as far as Hermione could tell.

“What happened?” Ginny asked, tentatively reaching out to touch Ron’s face.

Harry cleared his throat. “We were ambushed while running flying drills. Three other recruits went down besides Ron, but the flight instructor stopped the attackers before anyone else could be hurt.”

“Death Eaters?” Hermione croaked, her voice finally unsticking from her throat.

Harry nodded grimly, his lips tight.

“I fought Death Eaters once!” Lockhart exclaimed over his book. “I read a book about it! There were hundreds of them surrounding me and an escaped convict, who I’d caught single-handedly, I’ll have you know. They wanted to kiss me because I’m so handsome, but I fought them all back with my pet reindeer, Porky!”

“Those were Dementors, you dimwit,” Harry said with a roll of his eyes. “And I’m the one who did all that.”

“It looks like he’s still stealing people’s stories,” Hermione said with an impatient scowl.

“Well, he should steal someone else’s stories somewhere else,” George replied in disgust. “We’re trying to have a touching moment here!”

“What’s wrong with him?” Ginny asked as if Lockhart had never butted in. Her jaw was clenched tight; Hermione could see the strain from the tension in the pounding vein at Ginny’s temple.

“He’s been enchanted,” said Mr. Weasley, his voice low and tired. He sighed and his whole body rose and fell with his exhalation. The lines in his face, usually formed by his good-natured smiles or a laugh, seemed carved from exhaustion. Hermione could just imagine him remembering Fred’s death. All of the Weasleys were somber, the reminder of their fallen son and brother nearly tangible. “The Healers aren’t sure what he’s been cursed with. He seems to be sleeping, but all attempts to wake him have failed.”

Hermione frowned as she eyed Ron’s serene face again. After months on the run sharing a tent, she was as familiar with Ron’s sleep habits as she was with her own, and usually he slept with less dignity: limbs askew, mouth gaping open. Seeing him so still sent a piercing pain through Hermione’s heart. He did not look like he was asleep; he looked closer to death.

“Were the other injured recruits similarly affected?” she asked.

Mr. Weasley sighed again, and the tension in the room increased. In the silence, Lockhart continued to read aloud from _Gadding with Ghouls_ , oblivious of his inattentive audience.

“No,” Harry answered instead. His eyes blazed behind his round glasses. “No, the senior Aurors think this was a targeted attack.”

Ginny’s eyes widened, and Hermione’s hands lifted to her own mouth, covering her shock and smothering a gasp before she could utter one. This was the price Ron paid for being Harry Potter’s friend, for being his brother in arms in every way two men who didn’t share blood could be brothers.

Hermione used to wonder what it would feel like having a brother—any siblings at all—but she’d learned when she’d become friends with Harry and Ron, after they’d saved her from a troll and she’d covered for them in front of Professors Snape, McGonagall, and Quirrel. They _were_ her brothers, though she still hoped that Ron could be something more. If he ever recovered from this attack.

She slowly reached for his hand, the one laying on top of the sheets next to his body. Grasping his fingers in hers, Hermione willed Ron to give her some sign that he knew she was there, that he was okay, that he would come back to her.

The others chattered around her as Ginny asked more questions and Harry and Mrs. Weasley answered them. An unknown length of time passed when Mr. Weasley touched her shoulder and gently said, “Hermione?”

“Oh, wha—yes?” 

“We’re going up to the tea room. Would you care to join us?”

The Weasleys filed out one-by-one, but Hermione couldn’t part from Ron. Not now. Not when he needed her.

Even before she shook her head in answer, Mr. Weasley smiled and patted her arm. “Look after him for us.”

“Of course,” she replied, her voice low even though the volume wouldn’t bother Ron. She tried to rub some heat back into his fingertips, but it was her fingers that were freezing, rendering the gesture useless.

Would she have been able to stop this attack if she had been there? Would she have been able to save Ron, at least? She chewed on her lip as she studied his face, her fingers itching to run across his eyebrows and the bridge of his long nose. Like the students of Hogwarts, had she failed to protect him, too?

 _“Hey!”_ Lockhart leaned over the bed, one hand at his mouth as if to shield his lips from eavesdroppers. However, the only other occupants on the ward, the Longbottoms and a barking, fur-covered woman named Agnes, were at the end of the room, their beds hidden from view by curtains.

“Yes?” Hermione answered patiently.

He pointed to Ron. “I think this bloke and I are best friends!”

+  
o  
+

At the end of visiting hours, Bill, Fleur, Percy, and George returned to their homes after receiving hugs from Mrs. Weasley and promises to keep them updated on Ron’s condition from Mr. Weasley. The remaining three Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione returned to the Burrow.

Mrs. Weasley immediately busied herself in the kitchen and demanded Ginny’s help with dinner before Ginny could sneak up the stairs with Harry and Hermione. Hermione offered her own assistance and was immediately steered up the stairs, though Ginny rolled her eyes at her mother’s antics (behind her mother’s back, of course) as Hermione reluctantly ascended.

She and Harry climbed to the very top of the stairs, to the room he shared with Ron whenever they made a visit to the Burrow.

Harry had invited Hermione and Ron to live with him at Grimmauld Place, and Ron, excited by the prospect of moving away from home and enjoying Kreacher’s cooking again, had readily accepted. Hermione had had nowhere else to go, though Harry hadn’t known that. He didn’t know her parents’ memories were still lost, didn’t know they still lived in Australia as Monica and Wendell Wilkins. She’d moved into 12 Grimmauld Place under the guise of supervising her friends and coordinating Harry’s efforts to clean out and redecorate the house again, to make it livable to his tastes and comforts.

After the trials for which they had been required to give testimony and the funerals of friends who had died at the Battle of Hogwarts, they’d spent a solid week of their summer cleaning and exchanging furniture. They hadn’t left the house or spoken to another living soul once the entire week, and had employed Kreacher to do their shopping and take Floo calls on their behalf. Then it had been time for Hermione to return to Hogwarts, and from Ron’s letters, she’d come to understand that their progress had slowed quite a bit since she’d left.

Ron’s bed creaked as Harry plopped down on it. He patted the space next to him, and Hermione joined him there, slowly sinking onto the mattress as if afraid it would swallow her whole. Harry leaned into her shoulder, his body radiating a warmth Hermione couldn’t remember feeling for so long. The temptation to let herself go, to collapse into Harry’s arms and unburden herself of her woes, strangled her. Maybe Harry felt the same way or maybe he had grown to recognize her despair, because he slid an arm around her shoulder and let his head fall against hers. They sat for a moment, awkward in their closeness, uncomfortable in the embrace, until Hermione sighed and closed her eyes and let herself lean against Harry. She was the one who held all the tension. She was the one who was awkward and uncomfortable. But once she accepted his comfort, she couldn’t deny how much she’d needed this. If only Ron was there with them.

Harry broke the silence, and Hermione’s eyes fluttered open. She already felt more refreshed.

“Ginny told me what it’s been like for you back at Hogwarts. I guess you hadn’t told Ron about it. He would have been up in arms over the way everyone is treating you at school.”

She grit her teeth, but she honestly couldn’t blame Ginny for filling Harry in. She wondered how detailed she’d been in her letters. Did Harry know about Malfoy following her around? Did he know that Ginny had asked for the Marauder’s Map for Hermione’s sake? Had he ever searched for her on the map before he’d lent it to Ginny?

“No, I… I hadn’t said anything to him. I didn’t want him to worry. Or you, either.”

An amused smile quirked the corners of his lips up. “Can’t help but worry. Something always seems to go wrong at Hogwarts; only now you’re there without us to help stop it.”

She placed a hand on his arm, her whole body filling with warmth over the rush of fondness that flooded through her. “You can’t always be the hero. Some evils are personal. I’ll be fine though.”

By the way her released his hold on her shoulder and leveled her with his steady gaze, he didn’t seem to believe her.

“Are your parents still angry with you?”

The abrupt change in subject, and the absurdity of the question, baffled Hermione. “My parents?”

“I know what happened in Australia. At least. I have my suspicions.”

“W—what do you think happened in Australia,” the question fell out of her dry mouth like a statement, lacking inflection. The sudden spike in her heart rate sent a rush of adrenalin through her veins, making her feel slightly dizzy. She hadn’t been prepared to have this conversation with Harry yet. It was one thing for Luna to know, but what would Harry think of her if he knew the truth? She didn’t want him to know how badly she’d failed.

“You went to Australia to find your parents and return their memories. Next time we see you, you’re distraught at the mere mention of them. And then you spent all summer at the Burrow or Grimmauld Place.”

Hermione gulped and dug her shaking hands into Ron’s sheets to still them.

“They were angry with you, weren’t they? For what you did? Altering their memories and sending them away?”

It took a moment for Hermione to react because she had expected a different conclusion. Once she realized Harry truly didn’t know her secret, all she could do was stare.

“Ron and I, we assumed you were giving them space to come to terms with the year they lost. Maybe that’s why you never seemed to go home and never brought them up.”

“You and Ron—you talked about me?”

Harry flinched. “We were worried about you. We know something happened in Australia. You came back different.”

Hermione couldn’t muster up any anger, though she had a sense that she _should_ be angry. Ginny was spying on Hermione and now she had just learned that Ron and Harry had talked about her behind her back. If they’d been so concerned, why hadn’t they come to her? Why hadn’t they asked her?

But that wasn’t fair, was it? They had tried to talk to her after she’d returned from Australia, and she’d given them her phony story about successfully finding her parents and returning their memories. She’d insisted on her story every time someone had asked. Was it their fault that she hadn’t been a good liar?

“Maybe I can talk to them,” Harry continued, and Hermione shook her head to clear her thoughts, which he took as an answer. “Your parents have no reason to listen to me, but if I can’t convince them that you did what you had to do, maybe I can convince them to be mad at me instead.”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

This conversation overwhelmed her, and Hermione wanted nothing more than for Harry to drop the matter. Fortunately for her, Ginny burst into the room just then, an annoyed expression on her face.

“I know Mum is trying to be hospitable by not putting the two of you to work today, but let’s be honest, shall we? Even if any of my brothers still lived here, she’d still ask _me_ to help with dinner. It’s not a woman’s job to cook, you know!” She paused at the sight of Hermione’s tense face and Harry’s frown, her brow creasing in confusion. “Did something happen?”

Hermione forced herself to release her grasp on the bedsheets and stood up. “No. I need some air.”

As she passed Ginny and fled down the stairs, she had no illusions that Harry would keep their conversation to himself. Maybe he would have once, before he and Ginny began dating, but now?

She slipped out the rarely used front door and into the waxing darkness. A gentle chill had accompanied the arrival of October at Hogwarts, but here in the south, a warm breeze met her on the front step, ushering her into the yard and out into the field were the Weasleys played pickup games of Quidditch. The field was barren now, the grass browning, the wind a little too strong for a casual game.

Turning to face the breeze, she looked back over the Burrow with its brightly lit windows, and a sadness Hermione did not expect overcame her. She had thought reuniting with Harry and Ron would ease her, and while her few moments with Harry _had_ comforted her in a way she hadn’t felt comforted in ages, everything felt wrong.

Ron lay in an enchanted sleep at St. Mungo’s, a patient of the long-term Janus Thickey ward, and there seemed to be no solution for his curse. Harry had suspicions about Australia, and knowing how much he liked a good mystery, it wouldn’t take long before he uncovered the truth of her trip there. The Weasleys had always welcomed Hermione into their home, accepting her as part of the family without a second thought (with the sole exception of those months during fourth year, when Mrs. Weasley had believed Rita Skeeter’s tripe about Hermione’s romantic exploits), but they weren’t _her_ family.

Spending time with the Weasleys, seeing Harry—and even seeing Ron, prone as he was right now—had not made her feel better. In fact, it made her feel more isolated.

There was no one for her. Not at her parents’ home, not in Australia, not at Hogwarts, or the Burrow. Hermione was completely alone.

 _Not completely,_ her mind whispered as Malfoy’s face floated to the center of her thoughts.

Malfoy was alone, too, wasn’t he? She remembered the look on his face when they’d stepped inside the Room of Requirement earlier that day and he’d seen for himself what a mess the Fiendfyre had made. For a single moment, he’d been broken. All his hopes and expectations, whatever they were, had been riding on the Room of Requirement, and it had taken one second for those hopes and expectations to shatter. The next second, he’d composed himself, hiding his feelings and his motivations behind a mask.

Malfoy had lost just as much as Hermione had. Confined to the castle due to his probation, he could not see or contact his parents. His father was in Azkaban anyway and unable to receive visitors. All his friends had turned against him. The entire school had turned against him, just like Hermione. They were both unlikable and alone. _Birds of a feather_ , as he’d said once.

The thought both saddened her and filled her with determination. Determination to do what, she wasn’t sure. She needed to change. She needed to make a difference. And she would do it without anyone’s support, if necessary.

Hermione was alone, but that would not weaken her. She would become stronger.

**TBC**


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warning** for some sexually explicit/self-harm things going on at the very end of this chapter. The story warnings have been updated accordingly.

To say Draco’s mood had soured after his foray into the Room of Hidden Things would have been an understatement. When he wasn’t in class or grabbing a quick bite in the Great Hall, he confined himself to his bed with the curtains drawn to deter his roommates from bothering him.

He spent the entirety of Saturday ensconced like this. Not even his hunger or a full bladder could motivate him to leave his bed.

This was what life was going to be like for the next nine months. He had no idea how his mother was faring at Malfoy Manor, and she, likewise, was as in the dark about him. No one engaged him in conversation that didn’t involve insults and ridicule. No one looked at him with the adoration he’d enjoyed before the war. If anyone touched him, it was to hurt him. There was no more softness in his life, and he could expect to exist this way until the school year ended in June.

If he survived that long.

Draco’s stomach grumbled for a full five seconds, twisting in his gut nearly to the point of nausea. He rolled onto his side and contemplated going in search of food and a bathroom, but voices entering the dormitory made him pause.

“Do you think what people are saying is true?” Blaise Zabini said, his tone disinterested even though he was the one who asked the question.

“I dunno,” Theodore Nott replied. “Seemed like one of Pansy’s pieces of gossip fodder at first. It’s hard to imagine Granger’d willingly shack up with Malfoy, but they are seen together an awful lot.”

Draco stilled, listening harder as a surge of anger made his heartbeat pound against his ears.

“It’d serve him right if the best piece of arse he could get was a Mudblood.” The hinges of Zabini’s trunk creaked across the dormitory from Draco’s bed, followed by a rustling sound as he dug through the contents. There was something giddy in Zabini’s voice, an emotion Draco had never heard from him before.

“Whatever, Zabini. I’m thankful. My father’s extended stay in Azkaban makes me the steward of our estate. As miserly as he is, I wasn’t going to see this kind of power or money until Father passed away. And what do you hate Malfoy for anyway? Your family wasn’t touched by the war.”

More rustling as robes were discarded and exchanged for pajamas. “I don’t need a reason to hate him. He acts like his family is better than the rest of ours, and I enjoy seeing him knocked down several pegs. Stalking Granger like he doesn’t know what else to do with himself, limping around from injuries rabid first years inflicted—it’s been the highlight of my year.”

Draco closed his eyes, remembering when he’d said similar words to Granger.

_...I didn’t want you to feel too proud of yourself. ...I like you best when you’re moping around the castle trying to figure out how to fit in with all the other children._

“Maybe he misses Potter,” Nott said with a snigger.

Zabini’s laughter drifted back out of the room, silenced by the quiet _snick_ of the closing door.

Rolling onto his side, Draco considered the implications of what he’d overheard.

Apparently, neither Draco nor Granger were as invisible as they’d thought. People had noticed him following her around and had interpreted their time together as time they’d chosen to spend with each other, rather than what it really was: Draco doing his very best to annoy Granger and succeeding. He hadn’t really considered what other people would think of them together because he hadn’t realized anyone was watching them close enough to notice.

Pansy had noticed, but Pansy noticed everything. Any observation could be tucked away in her memory to use against someone later, so it was not a surprise that she had catalogued how frequently Draco and Granger were seen together.

Weasley had noticed, too, but that was equally as understandable. Weasley was concerned for her friend, who had suffered hate and ridicule from her classmates since term began. Of course Weasley would notice Draco following Granger around if she was already keeping an eye on Granger anyway.

It didn’t matter, though. Draco didn’t care what anyone thought of him. The idea that there were students idiotic enough to believe or even entertain the idea that he and Granger were anything but enemies was laughable.

But maybe he could use this situation to his advantage.

He’d been searching for some way to piss off Granger and McGonagall, a way that was innocent enough to keep him out of Azkaban. Maybe this was it. If he played up to these new rumors, he’d brass everyone off, including Granger, who wouldn’t appreciate the attention and speculation caused by his proximity to her. Maybe, if he played it just right, he could confuse Granger just enough that she’d stop acting like such an uptight harpy.

What else did Draco have to do?

He climbed out of bed and grabbed his dressing gown, thinking carefully about this epiphany as he donned the robe and slipped out of the dormitory. Scheming made him hungry. Maybe he could bully one of the house elves in the kitchen to fix him a sandwich.

He slipped through the common room unnoticed by his Housemates for the most part. Nott and Zabini had staked a claim on the most comfortable chairs in front of the fire while Pansy lounged across the sofa, a book perched on her voluptuous chest. Younger students took up space at study tables and sprawled on the chilly flagstone floor with textbooks or Exploding Snap cards. No one looked up at Draco except for Pansy, whose calculating brown eyes followed him out the portrait hole.

Draco paid no mind because that was the only way to deal with Pansy. She craved attention, and nothing infuriated her more than a lack of it. That's why she had clung to Draco for so many years. Now that he had fallen from grace with the rest of his classmates, Pansy had been forced to create chaos and seek attention some other way.

As he climbed the stairs out of the dungeons and descended the stairs leading toward the basement, he wondered at the conversation he overheard between Zabini and Nott. Had Pansy started those rumors, or had they begun independently of her, based solely off the interactions observed between Draco and Granger?

Lost in thought, he passed the portrait of the bowl of fruit that designated the entrance to the kitchens and only realized it when he reached the end of the basement corridor. He turned around and swore under his breath. His path was blocked by three students, Hufflepuff third years maybe?

"Look," the boy on the left said, the word coming out as an exhalation that echoed off the subterranean walls.

"What do we do?" the girl in the middle asked.

The girl on the right withdrew her wand, a wild glint in her eyes that did not bode well for Draco.

Upon seeing the girl's wand, the other two Hufflepuffs drew theirs as well, much more hesitant than their companion.

Draco knew what was coming next and left his arms dangling at his sides, his hands open. All too aware of his wand in his dressing robe pocket, Draco did his best to ignore it and squashed his instinct to defend himself.

Granger had been right a week ago, when she'd made assumptions about Draco's motivations not to fight back against the mob that had scored his leg. There was something freeing about pain, something transcendental. While someone beat him, bloodied him, his mind became blissfully blank, almost like being cursed with an Imperius. Except Draco's body roared with sensation, his nerve endings exploded in agony, and his mind floated along, unconcerned.

The confident Hufflepuff girl took a step forward, and as a _"Petrificus Totalus!"_ left her mouth, Draco welcomed the spell, straightening his frame to make himself an easier target to meet the jet of white light. He hardly felt it when his limbs snapped together in a full-body bind and he fell backwards to the cold, stone floor. But he did feel it when the girl raced up to him to check the success of her spell and kicked him in the ribs in triumph. He felt every hit she aimed at him, and when her friends were finally convinced to join in, he felt their third-year spells, too.

He must have fallen unconscious eventually because he awoke to a house-elf levitating him through the dungeons, stopping before the portrait hole that led to the Slytherin common room. The creature squeaked when Draco groaned, its magic stalling, dropping him to the floor, prompting the house-elf to apologize profusely. It’s bat-like ears flapped with furious vigor, and it’s bulbous eyes watered, threatening to spill tears.

The Malfoys had had a house-elf once. Dobby. And then Potter had tricked Draco’s father into freeing the elf, and afterwards Draco had been responsible for collecting his own laundry to send out for cleaning. He could remember cursing Potter’s name as he picked up discarded briefs and robes from around his room. Thanks to Potter, Draco had received his own taste of servitude and it had not sat well with him.

Looking down at his dressing gown, Draco grimaced at the splotches of blood that stained the material. The Hogwarts house-elves might be able to get the blood out. He took the robe off and threw it over the elf mid-apology, and then he gave the password and climbed through the portrait hole, his whole body aching with each step and a stabbing pain puncturing his side with each breath.

He’d clean himself up in the morning. Right now, he just wanted to sleep. Sleep to forget his pain. Sleep to forget his failures. Sleep to forget that he was a man who no longer felt anything at all.

+  
o  
+

Draco’s muscles were stiff and sore as he sat up late the next morning. Instead of braving a bathroom where he’d draw attention to himself, he rummaged through his trunk for a mirror and an old handkerchief and retreated back to his bed, curtains drawn as always. The blood that had ruined his dressing gown had spurted from his broken nose, making him look like an illustration from a Dark Arts text. This must be what vampires looked like when they fed. Or perhaps werewolves when they returned to their human shape, if they’d managed to catch any prey while transformed. He held the mirror further away from his face to get an overall impression, and he wasn’t sure if he liked what he saw or not.

Did he look dangerous or weak with a broken nose, half a face covered in blood, and a black eye? He couldn’t decide, so he conjured a glass of water and began to wipe away the oxidized, crusty blood.

He wished Granger were there to do it for him, but he pushed that thought away, reluctant to open the can of worms of the conversation he’d heard last night. Reluctant to consider the idea of Granger in his bed. But of course, once the thought had crossed his mind, he couldn’t banish it. Granger was there, in his head, chiding him for being so careless or stupid. He imagined her snatching the handkerchief from him and insisting on cleaning him up herself. She’d have to sit close and straight to reach his face. Their knees would touch, her breath would be warm against his chin.

His eyelids shuttered and his hands fell, his task forgotten, as he pictured it.

She would be close enough that he’d feel the heat radiating off her body, and maybe, finally, for the first time since before the Dark Lord had taken residence at Malfoy Manor, he’d be able to absorb the heat and keep it. In the process of wiping his face, her bare fingers would brush his jaw or maybe his lips, and Draco—the real Draco, the present one—his breath hitched at the thought of that human contact. Skin against skin, even if it lasted for only one moment before she gasped and drew away, horrified at the thought of touching him and even more horrified by the groan he would release.

Draco’s breath came in short pants, and both the mirror and the handkerchief fell out of his numb fingers, falling to the mattress, forgotten. His palm came to press against the erection straining against his underwear and pajamas, but he didn’t move—couldn’t move—beyond that point. His body was tight, drawn at both ends like a string, and if he moved, if he breathed, if he buried his hand in his pants and wrapped his fingers around his hot length as he wanted to do, the ripple effect of such gestures would shatter him into pieces.

No. He wouldn’t let the idea of soft skin, an embrace, affection, or understanding break him. He wouldn’t stoop so low as to jack himself off to the thought of Hermione bleeding Granger.

He gripped his clothed erection and squeezed until the pleasure escalated into pain. He would not sully himself in desperation. Not with her.

A moan slipped out from between his lips. The harder he squeezed, the more he wanted it: the pain, the desperation, _Hermione fucking Granger_. His other hand reached for his bollocks, squeezing, twisting, denying himself pleasure but his arousal escalating until his crushing grip sent him careening into a blasphemous, hateful release, his cock jerking and cum streaming over his lower belly, staining his pajamas.

He leaned over, a shaking arm steadying him against the mattress, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the discarded mirror.

The rusty blood still coated his lower face, and sweat beaded on his forehead. His lips were flushed and swollen from biting them, and his eyes had grown dark and stormy, half-lidded as he caught his breath and exhaustion spread through his body.

No, he looked neither dangerous nor weak. He wasn’t sure what he looked like, but the sight of himself sent a wave of disgust shuddering through him. Enough to pick up the mirror and throw it off the bed. With the curtains around his four-poster drawn, he did not see where it landed, but he heard a light thump that indicated a lack of satisfying shattering, which was just typical.

All of Draco’s attempts to obtain some kind of relief blew up in his face, and he was starting to get the feeling that he would never experience comfort again.

**TBC**


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time I updated on Draco's birthday. This time I'm updating on mine! :)

The castle seemed colder than when Hermione had left it two days ago. The corridors were dark and empty—as they should have been; it was nearly curfew. She didn’t have to wander the halls long before her ghosts manifested themselves in their solid form.

“If I knew you’d be honest, I’d ask you how you found me,” Hermione said with a sigh. She turned around and Malfoy stepped out of a depression in the wall where a suit of armor used to stand before its destruction in the Battle of Hogwarts.

“This time it was an accident,” he said.

“Is it common for you to stand in dark recesses in the middle of corridors or— _what happened?_ ”

As he stepped further out of the shadows, Hermione gasped. He had a black eye, a broken nose, and his arm was in a sling fashioned together with, what looked like, two neckties.

“What do you think happened?” he spat. It must have hurt to scowl because he suddenly winced.

“I was gone for one weekend. What did you do?”

He drew his shoulders back, trying to make himself taller than her, and Hermione, whose first instinct was to run her hands over his face to inspect him, distanced herself from him. The last thing she wanted to do was corner him until he snapped. The last time she’d done that, he’d shaken her senseless.

“It’s just like you Gryffindors to think I did anything to deserve this,” he hissed. The disgust in his voice filled her with shame to such a degree that she regretted her last words.

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said briskly, and she grimaced at how insincere she sounded.

She didn’t know what she was apologizing for. Even if Malfoy had verbally provoked someone, that was no excuse for the severity of his injuries. She’d witnessed a group of students attacking him before. They’d taken his wand from him and he hadn’t fought to get it back. Hermione knew from experience how much his wand meant to him, but Malfoy, no matter what was done to him, would not have raised a single fist in defense.

Maybe he was too cowardly to fight, or maybe he was broken, but Hermione knew in her heart that Malfoy had not inflicted these wounds on himself, and he had not deserved them.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Let me help?”

He hesitated for a moment. “Why?”

She released an exasperated breath, her whole body sagging in an exaggerated fashion. “Because I’m a Gryffindor and it’s the right thing to do. Why else would I help you?”

He took a tentative step forward, his expression still wary. “Maybe it’s a trap.”

“A trap?” Hermione said in a sardonic tone, her hands on her hips. “Do you really think Gryffindors are sophisticated enough to plan a trap? We’re too impulsive for all that!”

Malfoy snorted. “You’re right. Silly me. What was I thinking?”

“My thoughts exactly,” she replied, and she was shocked to realize they could communicate without arguing. They were teasing each other, and she wasn’t completely repulsed by the idea of getting along with him. “Come on,” she said, unnerved by their strange camaraderie.

She led him up to the Room of Requirement, which provided the same round room and hospital-like setting they’d used a couple weeks ago when Hermione had healed Malfoy’s injured leg. The nosy portraits that had adorned the walls, Hermione was relieved to see, did not make an appearance this time.

“Bring that over here,” she said, pointing to the wooden chair by the bed as she opened a cabinet, analyzing the contents. She didn’t have her beaded bag with her this time, but perhaps the room would provide everything she needed.

Malfoy grabbed the chair and moved it to the center of the room. “Not trying to get me in bed this time?”

Instead of taking insult, she merely rolled her eyes at the smirk on his face. “In your _wildest_ dreams,” she said while she compared a vial of essence of dittany and a jar of bruise removal paste. Deciding on the jar, she turned around and didn’t understand the look on his face.

Then he opened his mouth. “You mean in my worst nightmare.” His smirk became a sneer of disgust. “I wouldn’t touch you even if you found out you were adopted and your real parents were Merlin and Circe.”

Hermione glowered and poked his nose with the tip of her wand a little more ferociously than necessary. “Well, that would be absurd. Or at least highly improbable. Even though we can’t verify the exact dates Merlin and Circe lived and died, we can conclude that their lives couldn’t possibly have intersected thanks to doctrinal texts maintained by—”

“Granger.”

“—ancient Greek priests around the time Cleopatra VII ascended to the role of Pharaoh in Egypt—” 

_“Granger.”_

“—which could possibly place Circe around 51 BC. And as we know, Merlin attended Hogwarts, which was founded around—”

Malfoy grabbed her with his good hand, his grip tight on her upper arm. “If you don’t stop talking right now, I will not be responsible for my actions.”

She shut her mouth and met his eyes, but his held no expression, certainly not the anger his words appeared to convey.

“Sorry,” she said. _I ramble when I’m nervous,_ she didn’t add. The fact that she was nervous made her more nervous, but she wasn’t exactly sure why she was nervous in the first place.

The last time they had been in this room together, Malfoy had been splayed out on the bed, and she’d operated on his leg. Then, as he’d slept off the Calming Draught, she’d soothed him the way she would have soothed Harry or Ron. She’d held his hand and run her fingers through his hair, stroking his skin. She remembered his sleepy sighs of relief, and she hoped whatever higher power was out there that he’d been too deeply unconscious to realize how she’d touched him.

Her face flushed at the memory. She wasn’t going to knock Malfoy out this time. She was going to show him compassion, but she wouldn’t show him tenderness again. Not in her loneliness. Not while Ron was comatose in St. Mungo’s. 

“Here,” she said as she scooped some of the ointment out of the jar. She was surprised to see one of Fred and George’s concoctions in the Room of Requirement, but even before Fred had died, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes had done really well for itself. After the war, when laughter was needed more than anything, the shop had become one of the most successful businesses in Diagon Alley. She supposed it shouldn’t have surprised her to see their products in the castle.

She lifted Malfoy’s chin with a finger and dabbed the ointment over his black eye with gentle strokes so as not to hurt him. Then, with a muttered _"Episkey,"_ she used her wand to heal his nose. She was all too aware of how closely she stood in front of him, of his height while seated, where his eyes naturally would have fallen if his face hadn’t been turned up to hers. The awareness made her skin prickle, her breath sound too loud in her ears, and she felt utterly ridiculous for the reaction. Malfoy sat impassively, clearly feeling nothing except pain when she dabbed his wounds a little too hard, making him wince.

“Your nose is all better now,” she said, wiping the bruise removal paste from her fingers using a hand towel hanging from a cabinet. “Your eye should be healed in the next hour or so. What happened to your arm?”

He lifted his arm and wiggled his fingers with a grimace. “I think the wrist is sprained. Someone must have stepped on it in the process of kicking my ribs.”

The blood ran out of Hermione’s face, making her feel light-headed, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she removed his makeshift splint and examined his wrist first, carefully to avoid seeing or touching the ugly scar emblazoned on the underside. The wrist was swollen, the skin white from the puffiness, and she didn’t have to squeeze hard at all to make him gasp.

“Watch it!” he hissed.

“I’m just trying to see if it’s fractured,” she reprimanded him, her grip tightening on his forearm as she squeezed gently down the length of his wrist again. She watched his face for each grimace and determined that the pain was localized, not spreading. “You’re right, it’s sprained,” she said as she released his arm.

“Hmph,” he grunted.

Her wand came down with a light tap on his wrist and a _“Ferula.”_ Bandages sprung out of the tip, wrapping tightly around a splint and covering his arm halfway to his elbow. She smiled at him in satisfaction. “There. You should really keep some ice on it to help keep the swelling down so it can heal. Twenty minutes three or four times a day should do.”

He pulled his wrist to his chest, examining the bandages suspiciously. “How do you know how to do all this stuff?” he asked.

Hermione shrugged, a little embarrassed by her answer. “I fractured my ankle when I was nine trying to climb a tree.”

“You? Climbing trees?” he scoffed with a snort.

She averted her eyes by carefully disposing of Malfoy’s old bandages and putting away the bruise removal paste. “Some of my classmates from primary school were throwing rocks at a cat and I tried to stop them, so they started throwing rocks at me. They thought I was odd anyway. I guess I’ve never been likeable.” Her lips turned up into a self-deprecating smile, but she knew by the look on his face that it wasn’t convincing.

“Birds of a feather.” He stood up, his spine stiffening. “Thanks,” he muttered, lifting his bandaged arm. “Mudbloods have their uses, I guess.”

“You’re such an ungrateful prat,” Hermione said, derision coating her words. “Do you care about anyone other than yourself?”

The way he stopped and watched her, eyebrows raised as if waiting for something, led her to believe that he was baiting her on purpose. He wanted to get a reaction out of her, and he knew just how to do it. But Hermione would not do what he expected her to do this time. She would neither fall for his trap nor humor him.

Hermione closed the distance between them, and he smirked at her attempt to threaten him with her diminutive size. “I will not take your abuse just because there isn’t anyone else willing to tolerate me, and you will not speak to me that way again, or I will _make sure_ you see the inside of a prison cell for the rest of your days.”

“This is who I am, Granger. It’s not my fault you don’t take threats seriously.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“What?”

Hermione met his eyes, freezing him in place with the force of her glare. “I don’t believe you’re a threat. You’d like to be, wouldn’t you? You’d like me to believe you’re a horrible monster, but you’re not. And I don’t believe this is who you are. I have to believe that, otherwise what am I doing every time I make the choice to help you?”

“I am a monster, or have you forgotten—?” He raised his left arm, the one Hermione had just examined, and then scowled when he realized his proof was obscured under layers of bandages.

Hiding the remnants of his Dark Mark.

If he thought the reminder of his allegiance to a cause that wanted Hermione imprisoned or dead would sway her assessment of him, he was wrong. Hermione had attended his trial. She had been there at Malfoy Manor when he had been too cowardly to sell Harry out to his parents. And she knew the intimate details of what had happened on the Astronomy Tower with Professor Dumbledore from Harry. There was nothing about Draco Malfoy wearing the Dark Mark that frightened her.

“No,” Hermione said, voice softening, “you’re not. I see it now. You’re rotten as a corpse, inside and out, but, like a ghost, you’re all talk and no bite. Your loneliness makes you lash out, doesn’t it?”

Malfoy bared his teeth and released a dry, scoffing sound. “Are you going to try to save me?”

“I’m not going to try,” Hermione replied. “I _will_ save you, even if you fight me every step of the way.”

“Why bother?”

An unamused smile stretched across her lips. “Because I’m a Gryffindor and it’s the right thing to do. Why else would I do it?”

“Then you’re an idiot.”

“You’re the one stalking me. Does that make you an idiot, too?”

His lips pursed together, unwilling or unable to answer.

Hermione sighed, deciding to move on before he continued this useless argument. “If your ribs are broken, I think you should go to the hospital wing.”

Malfoy was already glaring, his arms coming around his torso as if to protect said ribs from her.

“If the injury is very serious, you’re going to need medical attention. We can come up with an excuse to give Madam Pomfrey. Say you tripped on the stairs or fell off your broom.”

“I’m not going.”

She exhaled in exasperation at his stubbornness, wondering for the thousandth time why she was trying so hard for him. But she’d already made up her mind to help him, and he was the only person she _could_ help, the only person willing to accept her assistance. The other students avoided her, and she knew being seen around the castle with Malfoy wasn’t going to improve their opinion of her, but at least she was making a difference to him. As long as he wasn’t violating his probation, she could patch him up and keep him out of Azkaban.

The weekend spent at the Burrow had given Hermione some clarity into her situation.

First of all, she and Malfoy were both equally isolated and alone.

Secondly, he stalked her for a reason, to get under her skin. His ungratefulness after her deigning to help him was just another part of that plan to needle her.

Third, as much as they loathed each other, they were their only allies. They were the only people who understood what they were each going through, and maybe he was unwilling to see the benefits of civility toward her, but Hermione certainly saw them.

Hermione was alone in a way that Ginny, Neville, Luna, and Harry could never understand. As a child, being alone or lonely had not bothered her. Making friends had been difficult and she had found ways to counteract the loneliness by embracing solitude and immersing herself in books. Friendship with Harry and Ron had spoiled her, and now the thought of being so utterly alone and misunderstood devastated her.

She could make her world feel a little bigger, a little less lonely, if he’d just allow her in his. Months ago—a week ago—the very idea of trying to get along with Malfoy would have repulsed her, but Hermione was desperate to help _someone_ , and Malfoy desperately needed her help.

He was one of a very small group of people in the castle whose demeanor toward her had not changed since the war. Even Ginny did not treat Hermione the same. Maybe Ginny thought she was doing what was right to protect Hermione, but somehow she made Hermione feel even more isolated. It was refreshing to speak to Malfoy, to interact with him, and know exactly what he was going to say and how he was going to react.

“Fine then,” Hermione said. “I’ll take a look in the library to see if there are any texts about treating broken bones.”

She took a step back, giving Malfoy room to breathe again. It was a clear dismissal, but he didn’t move. Instead, he stared at her, eyebrows knit together in concentration, as if she were an Arithmancy problem he couldn’t solve. Regret that she’d already put away her supplies filled her as she stood before him and waited for him to leave, discomfited by his clear, icy eyes.

Finally he did move, and she wished she had put more distance between them because suddenly he was too close, his body nearly touching hers, his head towering over her. She refused to be cowed by him, so she stared back in defiance, hands clenched at her sides but ready to draw her wand if necessary.

“Thank you,” he said, words low and gruff. Was it gratitude or reticence that altered his voice?

Hermione’s heart pounded, and she knew she was imagining it, she had to be, but she thought she could feel the reverberations of his own heart beating, like ripples in water, spreading out, growing larger, until they reached an obstacle that disrupted their symmetry.

The heat of him she did not imagine. It was palpable against her skin, through her robes, magnified by her own burning body as she flushed.

She didn’t avert her gaze despite her discomfort.

“You’re welcome,” she said, her own voice soft in the quiet of the room.

The silence lengthened, tensed, growing more tangible the longer he battled within himself. His eyes flickered, darting from the center of her face to her lips, so quickly Hermione had the impression that he wasn’t truly looking at her at all. But when he did speak, his gaze stilled, lowering to avoid her.

“You’re wrong about me. I do care about people other than myself.”

“Your parents?” she said with a sneer.

He nodded, eyes flinty at her tone. “I have to stay out of Azkaban or my mother will be alone. I’ll suffer the loneliness for the next few months, I’ll take the pain inflicted on me, the hatred, _your_ hatred, as long as I get to return home in June. I endure this for her.”

Hermione swallowed, and despite herself, tears filled her eyes.

Malfoy’s father was in Azkaban, but his mother was at home waiting for him. Her parents were in Australia, unaware of her existence. Well—unaware that she was their daughter. To them, she was a troubled girl who had intruded in their home this past summer, waved a wooden stick in their faces, and sobbed as she insisted they were her parents. To them, she was a strange incident, a bizarre story to tell their Australian friends.

Malfoy was alone now, but he wouldn’t always be, and she hated and envied him for it.

Unable to speak, Hermione’s head bowed lest he witness her turmoil and pain and somehow weaponize it to use against her. She watched through her blurred vision as his feet withdrew from her field of view, and only once the door closed behind him did she wipe the tears away with her sleeve.

She gave herself a few moments to compose herself, and then she, too, departed from the room to return to her rounds, unaware the whole time that someone watched her from the shadows.

**TBC**

**Author's Note:**

> **Original Prompt**
> 
>  
> 
>  **Pairing(s):** Draco/Hermione  
>  **Prompt:** Soon after they return to Hogwarts for their eighth year of schooling, Hermione comes across Draco being taunted and tortured by a mob of students of all ages. All the horrible memories of her own torture in Malfoy Manor come flooding to the forefront of her mind. What does she do?  
>  **Preferred rating:** Any  
>  **Squicks:** None  
>  **Other comments:** Go dark or as hopeful as you want.


End file.
